Run Girl Run
by backupaccountformyoldfanfic
Summary: Vanya has been running away since she was seventeen. She's been alone longer than that. Based on this idea I had on tumblr: Title is a play on 'Run Boy Run,' by Woodkid. Warnings for: swearing, dark themes, violence, imprisonment/kidnapping and death.
1. Chapter 1

Vanya has been running away since she was seventeen. She's been alone longer than that. Living on the lamb doesn't suit her, exactly, but she_ is_ used to it by now. She has no friends, no acquaintances, no one to talk to. She is a ghost, slipping in and out of cheap motels and dingy diners; she's cultivated her entire persona around the goal of being invisible. (Growing up as ordinary Number Seven made that easy- almost second nature.) Vanya is used to not being seen, and even more used to not being interesting.

So when a body drops into the seat across from her in a cafe in upstate New York she is understandably surprised.

Dread wins out in her gut, however, when her sister smiles pleasantly and says, "I heard a rumor you didn't run away from me."

_Shit._

Vanya is twenty-eight and feels like a child when her sister slips her sunglasses to the end of her nose and inspects her head to toe. "You gonna scream if I don't rumor you to be quiet?"

Vanya grits her teeth against a swell of bile and grinds out, "What do you want, Three?"

That gets to her sister; Allison purses her lips and taps too sharp nails on the tabletop. Somehow, none of the other patrons have realized the tiger in their midst yet. The fools won't know what hit them if Vanya makes a wrong move now. "Now, that's no way to treat your long lost sibling, is it? I have a name, you know. I've been told it's very beautiful by some very reliable sources."

Vanya can't help but scoff. "And how many of them did you have to rumor to wrestle that compliment out of them?" She should not be antagonizing her sister, but God it's only been a few minutes and it's like she's ten again, squabbling over who got to the bathroom first. She should not be this- she's not comfortable, of _course_ not, but it shouldn't be this easy to look at Allison's face and see passed all the glitz and glamour and malevolent sweetness to the kid who used to hold her hand and ask if Vanya wanted to sleep over every Saturday night.

Allison is glaring. "I didn't rumor _you_ when you said it was pretty . "

Vanya remembers that- she'd been the first person ever to use her sister's given name. It twists a knot in her stomach. "That was before."

"Ah, before! Before, before, before. You're stuck in the past, sis."

"And you're a raging lunatic; tell me something I don't know."

Allison smirks and Vanya curses herself for still thinking of her with her given name after all these years. She has to remember that the woman before her hasn't been Allison in a very long time. "Homelessness gave you claws, didn't it?"

"I'm not homeless," she protests, but it's weak even to her own ears.

"Well you certainly haven't been back in quite a while. We were getting worried, you know. You could have called home."

That startles a bitter laugh from Vanya's lips. Her legs are straining beneath her jeans, anticipation and fear making her tremble under the weight of the rumor. "The Academy hasn't been my home in a long time, Three. Maybe ever."

Something about what she says or maybe how she says it gives her sister pause. Allison's eyes are softer now. "I did tell you I wanted to change that, Vanya. I still do."

"The cost was too high back then," Vanya reminds her, clenching her fists around her lukewarm coffee. The cafe seems to be collapsing around her, her vision tunneling. "And it's too high now."

"We'll see." Allison hums. She slips the sunglasses back on, stands, and hooks a friendly arm through Vanya's. She has to stumble to her feet clumsily and feels even more childish, standing nearly a foot shorter than her sibling. "Anyway, Dad's dead. Come on."

_"What?"_

Number Three grins. "We've got the car out front."

"I'm not going anywhere with you. Any of you."

"I heard a rumor you came with me. _Quietly."_

Diego has always had a soft spot for muscle cars and Vanya can see from the big black number parked in front of the Midnite Bite Diner that that hasn't changed in eleven years. The engine revs before they even step out into the baking sun and Allison rolls her eyes at Vanya, grinning like they're carefree teenagers again.

Vanya wants to retch.

Allison's hand on the back of her head as she is stuffed into the car is heavy and unrelenting. Her nails scratch at Vanya's scalp in a way that would be comforting in another setting; here it just makes Vanya shiver uncontrollably. The air conditioning is blasting inside and she hopes she can pass that off as the reason for her sudden shakes.

"Vanya! Long time no see."

Klaus ( _Four, Four, why couldn't she get this through her own thick skull?_ ) is waiting in the backseat. He spreads his arms wide, the feather lining of his duster brushing her cheekbone, her ear. His fingers are already curling in her hair and Vanya is abruptly thrown thirteen years into the past, when he used to braid her hair just for something to do with his hands. She used to love him for it- it was probably one of the reasons she had kept her hair so long.

Now it's only this long because she doesn't have the cash or the time to go to a barber. And there's always the chance someone would see her, someone who'd seen the 'missing person' posters and wanted to be a Good Samaritan.

Or she might be seen by someone seedier- someone who knew who she was, knew who her family was. Someone who'd have heard about the reward Klaus had promised the criminal underground for any details on his wayward little sister. Someone Diego had threatened into being a snitch to a few corrupt police officers. Someone rumored to follow any woman with long brown hair out at night and report back to the Academy.

It doesn't matter now, she supposes. Whoever saw her, they talked all too willingly, and now here she is.

Klaus tugs on a lock of hair and grins. His eyes are dazed but his teeth are so sharp. "Penny for your thoughts, dear sister?"

"Go to hell," Vanya snaps, and ignores the snort from the driver's seat. Allison slides into the passenger side, slams her door and pops a stick of gum in her mouth. The car peels out.

"Already been, honey," Klaus leans over her and for a moment all she can smell is sweat and musk and that old cologne she should not find as familiar and comforting as it is. Then he pulls back and clicks her seatbelt into place. "I'd never ever _ever_ wish it on family. Take notes."

"Are we family?" Vanya asks, channeling her best attempt at Five's old sardonic tone. She can see her brother's shoulders hitch forward. His expression crumples for a second before smoothing over into a genial smile and a raised eyebrow.

She tells herself she doesn't feel guilty.

"Yes we are!" That comes from the front seat. _Ah._ Vanya should have known Diego wasn't going to keep his mouth shut for long. He catches her eyes in the rearview mirror and she has to tear away; not because of his glare, mind you, but that shade of brown, the nick in his brow- there's too much history there for her to look directly at. Her head spins and the bile is back. "How could you say that about us? All we've ever wanted to be was a normal fucking family Van. It wasn't any of us who messed that up."

"Could've fooled me," Vanya mutters resignedly, and turns to rest her head against the window for the rest of the duration of the ride.


	2. Chapter 2

"She's been asleep a long time- should we be worried?"

"It's fine, she's just tired. You should've seen her face in the diner, she was totally wiped."

Vanya wakes slowly. The fingers running through her hair are long and warm and familiar; they push her into a doze right off the bat. Her cheek is resting on something soft and warm too, something that feels slick like leather.

"Aw, is big bro Diego worried about his poor little sister?"

It takes her brain a minute to catch up.

"Shut up Klaus. I'm just making sure we don't have to pull over or something," Diego grumbles defensively. Then, quieter, "Who knows how long she's been awake. She always was shit at taking care of herself."

Oh God. It wasn't a nightmare.

"Look on the bright side mon frere! She won't have to worry about that anymore now."

Vanya's heart gallops in her chest; she can feel her muscles wanting to lock, her throat tightening. Tears press hotly against the backs of her eyeballs. Her scalp feels ablaze where her brother's fingers trail across it gently.

"Would you both shut it? You're gonna wake her up."

Unbidden, one drop of salt water slips passed her defenses and drips to Klaus's thigh. And just her luck, it lands on bare skin._ Damn lace-ups._

For a few minutes she thinks she may have gotten away with it though, since he doesn't make any startled movements. Maybe he thinks she drools in her sleep. Then hot breath is at her ear. "Relax," Klaus whispers; she can hear the smile in his voice. "You were pretty tired. You want Allison to rumor you to sleep?"

_No._ No, she does not want that. Vanya shakes her head minutely, feeling her brother's fingers tangling in her hair. He hums cheerfully and pulls away.

Somehow Vanya is able to get her muscles to loosen enough to let her brother's warmth lull her a little. If she just pretends they're kids again-

( _You can't trust him,_ says a voice like her father's in her head.

_Yeah, no shit,_ she tells it, and goes back to sleep out of spite.)

She wakes again later, jolting when the car rumbles to a stop. The front doors slam. Vanya keeps her eyes closed again, but she can see Klaus on the backs of her eyelids, leaning across her to push the driver's side door open. Crickets are singing.

"Careful with her." He warns whoever is waiting outside. Vanya suppresses the urge to snort indelicately.

"I always am." Oh _shit._ Of course Luther'd be here- Vanya curses herself for not thinking ahead. Father would be- well, more- ashamed.

"Yeah, right," Diego is saying in the background. Klaus helps transfer Vanya's limp form (should she resist? Scramble away? But why bother when she still can't run from Allison's rumor?) into the waiting arms of her biggest brother. "Remember that time with the bathroom and the doorknob?"

"That was an accident," Luther huffs, shifting her in his arms. He starts walking but his grip is so confident and sure she can barely feel his footsteps. "If I've said it once I've said it a billion times."

"And yet none of us believe you," Klaus calls. As the door opens his voice gets fainter. They're on the stairs now; Luther always had the longest stride. "Wonder why that is, Lulu!"

"Ridiculous," her brother mutters. In any other situation, Vanya would laugh.

She is settled softly onto a bed she doesn't recognize- it's certainly not her old one; she'd have recognized that, with the one lump that dug into her left shoulder and the broken spring at the foot of the bed. It would have been soothing in its familiarity. This bed is wider and longer than she could ever hope to afford on her own. Vanya barely sinks into it's plush surface; the covers are fluffy and heavy when Luther tucks them around her. ( _They remembered I like weighted blankets,_ she realizes, and something in her chest threatens to break.)

"Welcome home, Vanya." Luther says quietly, and she has to hold in the tears until he slips out of the room. A lock clicks. She ends up silently crying herself into a third bout of sleep, but this time her rest is fitful.

_Vanya is flipping through the five channels the motel TV can receive out here. Of all the motels she's been staying at in the past few months since she left, this has got to be the seediest. Her bed is rickety enough that she woke up every time she rolled over last night, the water came out of the faucet brown, and the TV is so small that she squints from the edge of the bed just to make out faces. The reception is grainy at best and Vanya almost considers simply leaving it on static for some background noise._

_She's just passing the news for the fiftieth time when the announcer blindsides her._

_"When will the reign of terror over central New York by the notorious Umbrella Academy end? Stay tuned for our panel of analysts and psychologists to weigh in after this break."_

_Vanya is frozen all through the five ads that play, eyes unseeing and back stiff as a board. Not even that one ad with the talking seagull that Klaus used to imitate to make her laugh can phase her._

_The headline at the bottom the the screen reads: "When It Rains, It Pours; Umbrella Academy Strikes Again!" Someone from the creative department was pretty proud of that one. Vanya's heard them all._

_"Sandra, can you catch us up on all that's been going on in the past few weeks?"_

_"Sure, Carl. It seems the group of criminals masking themselves as vigilantes known as the Umbrella Academy have come back with a vengeance after the brief reprieve we had from them beginning around three months ago. There have been a string of murders and injuries, mostly of CEOs and businessmen and -women who have been under suspicion of corruption or charged with extortion in the last year. Meanwhile, three banks have been hit and the streets are running scared from the newest drug epidemic. New York, you are not safe."_

_Oh God. She'd thought she'd have more time after Ben-_

_"Hang on now, are we supposed to sweep all the good the Umbrella Academy does under the rug like that?"_

_The newscaster heaves a visible sigh, and Vanya feels a certain kinship with the fifty-year-old. She too is tired of defending the Academy to all and sundry; she's beginning to realize it may be an exercise in self-deception. "Do you have a differing view, Mr. Kenneth?"_

_"Yes! This team, it is misguided, yes, but you can't argue with the results. There is less corruption on Wall Street, local orphanages and homeless shelters are getting bigger and bigger 'anonymous' donations, and they're even helping with missing persons cases these days! In the wake of such terrible loss the Academy seems to have sustained-"_

_"Those allegations are simple hearsay and have no grounds in reality-"_

_"Oh, come off it, Dr. Keller! They have six members one day, there's a terrible ruckus at the Academy estate, then silence for months and the next time we see them, they're down to five. What does that tell you?"_

_"There may be a range of plausible explanations."_

_"Oh, ha, sure!"_

_They warble on but Vanya has stopped listening. Her chest feels like it's caving in, her heart imploding, her brain short-circuiting. Ben, Ben, Ben…_

_And now her family was looking for missing people. Or a missing person._

_The walls are shaking. Dust rains down from the plaster in the ceiling and rain pelts the windows. It shouldn't be possible, not after Allison-_

_The ensuite's door comes down with a crash._

_She gasps, cheeks wet, and scrambles to the edge of the mattress, hands outstretched, searching for the orange bottle-_

And falls right off the edge of the bed. Her shoulder makes an ominous cracking sound as she lands in a heap. Vanya reaches out reflexively, fingers clawing at the floorboards, but relaxes quickly. She'd gone through her last bottle of pills ages ago.

( _You're too dangerous,_ her father says.

_You love to point out the obvious, don't you?_ She snarks back.)

Vanya's new room is easily twice the size of her childhood fare; it's all old carved wood beams and soft sunlight. The bookshelves are full to bursting and she wonders vaguely if they picked this room on purpose- most of her good memories with Ben and Five consisted of the quiet in the library and the smell of old tomes. The window curtains are drawn, but her four-poster bed (because of course Sir Reginald had those) is open to the rest of the room. She'd pulled both the coverlet and the sheet to the floor with her.

There's a knock on the door. Her siblings must have heard the thump.

"Piss off," Vanya calls and the door opens.

"Have you been spending time with Diego by any chance?" Klaus asks her as he swings into the room, smile dazzling. He brings the stale scent of roses and muck with him, like he's been out in the flowerbeds again; dust plumes from the door rebounding off the wall as he waltzes forward and offers her a hand. "He greets me in just the same way in the mornings."

She doesn't miss him slipping a key up his other sleeve but remains silent. Vanya grits her teeth so hard that somewhere out there her old dentist wakes from sleep in a cold sweat and takes his hand. It is embarrassingly easy for her twig of a brother to haul her up.

"At least I have an excuse to be pissed," she grouses under her breath. Klaus cocks his head to the side and Vanya has to tamp down on the urge to reach out and smooth his hair down like she used to before they went to breakfast with Father and he got yelled at for being unkempt.

_They're not who you thought they were,_ she reminds herself. Her fingers still twitch.

"What's got you all in a twist?" He huffs, pouting. An arm comes around her shoulders, deceptively strong and very bony. Vanya catches herself wondering if he's had enough to eat lately- the two of them and Five always had a habit of forgetting mealtimes.

Vanya stares. "Are you seriously asking me why I'm upset right now?"

Klaus nods emphatically. He is steering them towards the stairs and a large majority of her still trusts him enough to make sure they don't fall, so Vanya turns her head and gives him the most unimpressed look of her life.

"You're asking me why I'm angry...the morning after you kidnapped me."

"Well now, kidnapping is such a strong word-"

"You accosted me in a public place, forced me inside a vehicle and took me to a secondary location without my consent. That's literally the definition of kidnapping."

"We didn't take you to a _secondary location,_" is spat from across the living room. Vanya leans around Klaus's fluffy shoulder (did he ever take that coat off?) to peer at Diego. "We took you _home_."

"This isn't my home and you know it."

Her brothers both scowl; for a moment, it's as if all the air has been sucked from her lungs. She's always hated this part of her empathy; how the feelings, so powerful especially from her loved ones, twist like snakes in the pit of her stomach. She sighs, trying to alleviate the pressure of _guilt-anger-resentment_ in her gut. Thankfully neither of her brothers seem to notice the slight trembling of the vases above the mantle.

"Dad's gone," Diego tells her, and if it wasn't pronounced so harshly Vanya would go so far as to say it's a reassurance. "It can be your home now. Not his."

Vanya levels a flat gaze at him and doesn't deign to answer. After a momentary staring match, Diego scoffs and turns away. "Whatever. When was the last time you ate?"

Uh. What?

"Uh, what?"

He's glaring again; she wants to tell him his face is going to get stuck that way. "When did you eat last? Food. Sustenance. Energy. Ring a bell?"

Vanya goggles at him as Klaus crows a too-high laugh, tightening his hand on her shoulder and shaking it a little. His thumb is rubbing circles into the wrinkled grey cloth of her sweater.

Diego smirks. It doesn't reach his eyes. "Whatever. You look like shit. Mom made breakfast."

Okay then.

She's just getting tired of playing house in the kitchen when the last of her brothers and Allison walk through the front door. Allison waves cheerily at her and heads straight for the coffee pot, throwing down her purse in the unoccupied seat beside Vanya. The bag tilts and spills a few cosmetics, hairpins and Allison's wallet onto the floor.

"Oh shoot. No, no leave it, it's fine," she says. But Vanya is already bent down, clumsily shuffling the mess together. She comes up a little out of breath and shoves it back inside the white leather unceremoniously. Her sister winks cheekily from her seat on the counter. "Thanks, sis."

"Aw, I don't know what we'd do without you, Van," Klaus pipes up from her other side, arm thrown over the back of her chair. He hasn't let go of her since he woke Vanya up- she wonders if she cried out in her sleep at all. She knows he saw how wet her cheeks were before she could dry them surreptitiously.

"Rob a few banks and plot the murders of Wall Street's finest, evidently." Diego makes to fly into a rage, but Grace turns from her spot at the sink, smile plastered in place, and lays a hand on his shoulder. He relaxes, sneering.

Luther is holding a decorative urn. That- that's her father. That's all that is left. Vanya always assumed she'd feel more in this moment; but if she's being honest, it doesn't seem real. That's- that isn't Sir Reginald Hargreeves. He's got to be out there somewhere, plotting his next insult or mind game.

"I know," Luther leans closer. "Doesn't seem like it's true, does it? Like he may pop out from around the corner any second. I keep going back to his study just to make sure he's not there."

Vanya resists the need to reel away from him, but does turn her cheek. She tells herself the tiny noise he makes isn't wounded.

"How did he die?" She raises her coffee mug to her lips, unwilling to look anyone in the eye. Her back is tense under Klaus's touch and she very deliberately does not glance at the front door- at freedom.

"Old man caught a bullet to the back of the head." Diego smirks at Vanya's wide eyes, kicking his feet up on the table. Grace sighs. "And before you ask, no it wasn't any of us."

"Excuse me for going for the obvious motive," Vanya replies dryly. "I remember Five once saying Father deserved that exact end. None of you disagreed back then."

"For a while there Luther thought it might have been you," Klaus says conversationally. If he's noticed his sister's discomfort, he has elected to ignore it. "But I said, I said, 'Oh not our ickle little Van-Van! She used to save the spiders and the flies when we found them inside the house!'"

"They never hurt anybody," Vanya answers blankly, before feeling her cheeks flush. Her siblings are all watching her closely, eyes soft. Allison and Luther are smiling tentatively, Klaus is grinning and even Diego seems looser, at ease as he watches her.

Vanya bristles. "If it wasn't any of you and it wasn't me- which it wasn't- then aren't you going to look for whoever murdered our father?"

"In due time." Allison's tone is just shy of patronizing and Vanya has the strong urge to punch her in the face. "Right now, it's not like this doesn't work in our favor- the old man was a bastard. Good riddance, I say."

"And we get our inheritance now!" Klaus pokes her in the ribs. Vanya is not going to leave this room without committing homicide.

"So you can stop stealing from jewelry shops, yippee. I'm sure the business forecasts at Jared's just went through the roof."

There's a pregnant pause. Vanya sips her coffee and wonders how Mom got it just right when she didn't even drink it before she left.

"Anyway," Luther tries, smile strained. "We're having a service in the yard, underneath the old tree he liked. Last thing we have to do for the old man. Finish up and come on out, huh?"

Vanya snarls into her mug and picks at the pancakes she's barely made a dent in. Allison scoops up her bag, breezes by with a tweak of Vanya's hair and murmurs something about getting ready for the funeral together that Vanya steadfastly ignores. Diego and Klaus have fallen into conversation since Luther exited into the yard, but she can feel Diego watching her push her food around her plate.

_It's going to be a long few days,_ Vanya thinks dejectedly, and curls her other hand into a fist in the pocket of her sweater. Metal bites into her palm. She wonders when her siblings are going to tell her why she's back after all this time.

The dishes in the drying rack rattle gently.


	3. Chapter 3

Sir Reginald Hargreeves rests in a tiny pile of grey ash in the center of the courtyard.

"This would have worked better if there was some wind," Luther acknowledges into the silence.

"So he can land in the neighbor's yard?" Vanya asks. Klaus giggles.

Vanya turns, feet stubbornly trying to slip in the mud that the sudden rain produced, and heads back inside with her head down. She doesn't want to see Ben's statue again. When she'd first stepped into the yard, her eyes locked with his bronze ones and there'd been screaming in her mind. Gunfire still echoes in her ears.

(_"Vanya, get back!"_

_"I'm not leaving you!"_

_"We aren't who you think we are, Van- this has been a long time in coming. We've been prepared for this, you just have to trust us. We're going to keep you safe."_

_"What are you talking about, Ben?"_)

It's barely been a day and she's ready to leave these memories behind. You'd think eleven years would be long enough for her guilt to settle. You'd be wrong.

"So what now?"

Luther cocks an eyebrow at her as they trail in from the yard. The weak afternoon light makes the living room softer around the edges than she remembers it being. The late hour had surprised her but she supposes she slept late that morning; nightmare usually did that to her. And the sudden downpour after breakfast did push the funeral back a few hours. (She won't admit that Luther dashing in soaked to the bone made her snicker, but she's pretty sure Klaus heard her anyway.)

"What do you mean? Like, for dinner? I was thinking we'd decide after we wait the rain out- I wonder where it came from. Allison, didn't you say today would be clear?"

Vanya knows where the rain came from. From the knowing light in her eyes, Allison does too. But her sister shakes her head and simply replies with, "Weather guy must have been wrong."

"I wasn't talking about the _weather._ " Vanya has to clench her fists to keep from doing something regrettable. She can't risk a lapse in control- not here. "I was talking about the whole 'you guys kidnapped me after eleven years of silence' thing."

Klaus starts with, "It wasn't kidnapping-" just as Allison rolls her eyes and says "Don't you think you're being a little overdramatic," and Diego snarls wordlessly before he slams a fist against the wall.

"Yeah," Vanya drawls, very carefully taking a step back from the group. She's so close to the entrance now- if only Diego and Allison weren't so quick… "_ I'm_ the dramatic one in the family. _Obviously_ ."

"What is wrong with you?" Diego snaps.

" _Me?_ "

"We're all trying to be a family- trying harder than _you_ did. And now we _all_ have a chance and _you're_ caught up on what the fucking papers have to say about us?"

"Is it not true?" She asks, and for a wild moment she wants desperately for him to deny it, to tell her that all her childhood hopes and dreams were true and her family is made up of heroes instead of misguided, broken little toy soldiers. But Diego just growls and turns away. Something in her heart twinges with old regret. "Just- just tell me, what are you going to do now that the criminal mastermind is dead?"

"Dear old Dad was never one of us." Klaus is lounging on the sofa, looking like a contented cat as he watches the family drama fold out. She hopes he's enjoying the show, because Vanya's pretty set on making this the finale.

"Tell that to the media," Vanya replies. She remembers all the ridiculous names the Umbrella Academy had that followed her throughout eleven years. 'The Fearsome Five' was the worst; it dragged the name of the one brother she still trusted through the mud.

"Is that," Luther looks unsure, "is that why you ran for so long? Because Dad was still the leader?"

There's a beat of silence. Vanya wishes her ears would stop their incessant ringing. Her heart beats so hard she's surprised her ribs don't break. "I ran because I couldn't stomach what the people I loved were capable of."

The lie tastes stale in her mouth. In the hall she can hear the chandelier swaying gently. _Calm, Vanya, you have to stay calm._

_( We wouldn't want an encore performance, now would we?_ Her father mocks. _I know Ben wouldn't attend- not for the life of him._

_Shut up, shut up, shut up._ She pleads.)

"Bullshit," Diego declares. He's got that look on his face Vanya has never been a fan of- it only appears when he's about to get uncomfortably insightful. It's been the precursor to more than a few fistfights in this household. "You were- _are_ \- running scared. More scared than you'd ever be of us."

"Are you sure about that?"

Her brother is a class act against criminals and peacemakers alike, but before his sister he jerks away, expression caving in at the seams. "You- you're not scared of us." It sounds like a question.

Vanya keeps quiet. After a moment, it seems to sink in.

Klaus explodes from his seat just as Allison jolts forward too, hands outstretched in an attempt to soothe the unfixable. Even Luther is on his feet. Diego's mouth is moving; they are all speaking, shouting, trying to come to terms with their sister's judgement. It is so, so loud. They are closing in and Vanya is too far from the front door.

The effect is immediate. Vanya's vision goes fuzzy at the edges, milky white seeping in. Her fingers are trembling with effort and her lungs scream for more air. Her brain seems to have gone offline and she stumbles back on autopilot. Somewhere upstairs, very distantly, furniture crashes to the ground. She tries to throw it all out farther, to distance herself from this _choking-cloying-fright-guilt-hurt_ that's making her the most dangerous person in the room.

Her fumbling journey backwards ends when Vanya goes crashing to the ground as her knees impact with the coffee table.

She lands on the same shoulder as this morning and this time, the pain catches up with her. Vanya hisses, feeling something important twist, the twinge of pain radiating upwards through the limb, up her neck, igniting a throbbing in her left temple. Her fingertips are numb. Vanya can feel blood slipping down her shins from the sharp corner of the table digging into the vulnerable flesh of the backs of her knees.

She looks up. Her family is a bizarre tableau; it's almost reminiscent of a Renaissance painting. Allison, the classical beauty, is stopped in front of the rest, one hand clamped to her mouth and the other palm outstretched, as if she could catch her sister from across the room. Luther and Diego are on the balls of their feet, poised to rush forward and assist, but there is a knife in one brother's hand, and the other's fists are clenches loosely. (_Reflex,_ says a faint voice in the back of Vanya's head, and she is not comforted). Klaus has evidently leapt over the back of the sofa to get to her, looking like a strangely large bird with his feathered coat.

The resounding crash of her fall silences the whole house. For a moment there is nothing but Grace's faint humming from far deep in the labyrinth she had called some kind of home for seventeen years.

"How could I not be afraid?" Vanya forces out passed the wheezing in her lungs. Her head spins, but she hauls herself up and dashes for the stairs, if only because they would follow if she tried for the door.

"Vanya? Are you awake?"

Her sister's voice sounds different through a solid block of wood. Vanya doesn't turn from her contemplation of the stars outside her window. They've afforded her quite a view, all things considered. Her old room had one small window, and it looked out on a tree with viny branches that used to scare her so much in the night that Diego had to creep across the hall and make hand puppets just to get her to sleep.

"Vanya, please, I- I just want to talk." Vanya can almost see her sister; she's doing that head tilt she always used when she wanted sympathy, especially when she was in the wrong and didn't want to admit it. Her curls are falling attractively across her face, her eyes are soft- she's probably got a hand on the door, gentle, so as not to scare the wild animal inside any worse.

Vanya hates herself for knowing this. She hates that she can't shut down that part of her heart that screams at her to just give in, to accept that this is her life, this is her place.

Instead, Vanya tells her heart to shove it, and focuses on the pounding in her head and the ache in her left arm. Pain, she has found, usually drowns out the emotions before they can become physical. Unless her focus backfires.

"I wanted to say that I'm sorry," Allison continues. Her sister is nothing if not persistent. It's annoying. "I'm- I'm what caused all this."

That gets her attention. She can't possibly be about to-

"I took your gift away. I'm so sorry; you must hate me."

Oh, for the love of all that was holy.

" _Seriously?_ " Vanya throws caution to the wind and stomps over to the door. She'd pushed the armchair in her room up under the doorknob to give herself some semblance of autonomy over whether the door was locked or not. But Klaus still has the key. "That's what you're getting from all this? That I'm pissed at you for doing something _good_ for once in your life?"

"It wasn't good, Vanya. I-_ violated_ you." The knob turns in futility and she can hear an exasperated sigh from the other side. "Look, can I please come in?"

"No!" Vanya feels wild, vicious, _angry_ . She hasn't felt actual anger- this kind, the type that spits fire from her eyes and pour gasoline through her veins- since Ben. "No, I don't think you can. This- this is the problem, Allison, you have no sense of boundaries. Any of you. I- I mean you _kidnapped_ me, for God's sake!" She doesn't even notice she's using her sister's given name; all Vanya can think about is gunfire and fear and rage, rage burning so hot it explodes out of her in a harsh gale.

"We just wanted to make sure you were safe. You've been gone for so long-"

"I _wanted_ to be gone! That was the whole reason to be gone in the first place- to make sure everyone was safe."

There's such a long silence after that proclamation that Vanya wonders if her sister has really left.

"Things could be different now," Allison says softly. Somehow Vanya has ended up almost pressed to the door, leaning her weight against it. She's not sure if she does it to be closer to her sister or to make sure the door stays firmly shut. "You don't have to worry about Dad- about any of them anymore. I could give it back."

Vanya's mind goes blank. _" What? "_

"I could give it back," Allison is gaining steam, "I could give it back to you, and you could be whole again. You could be a part of us- with us, everywhere. All the time. We'd be- be a team."

"Don't." Vanya's lips feel numb. Her eyes are open but she's not seeing anything but _red-red-red_ . Her brother screams somewhere she can't ever reach him. "Please, Allison, if you ever loved me, you won't take it back."

(_ Does it even matter if she does?_ Reginald speculates boredly. _A rumor can only last so long._

_I hate you,_ she hisses.)

"Why? Why can't you let yourself have this?"

"You know why," Vanya answers. She pushes away from the wood and takes three large steps back, her fists clenched. It's the same reason she is so very afraid for her siblings.

"Vanya?"

It's the same reason she has to leave again. "You know why. I killed Ben."

It's the early hours of the next morning before Allison will leave her. Vanya stopped hearing her pleading after about forty minutes. She'd had to go through all the old breathing exercises Mom had taught her as a child just to make sure all the glass in the house stayed intact.

She waits another hour for the sun to start to rise. When the first orange fingers unfurl across the deep blue outside her window Vanya pulls herself out of the corner she's squashed into and removes the armchair from under the doorknob. It's slow going, trying to ease the furniture away from the door when it's about the size of her entire body, but it's not like running away at seventeen didn't train her to get out of bad situations quietly.

Once she has set the chair down with only minimal thumping and wincing, Vanya scurries back to the door and drops to one knee. No doubt Diego or Klaus would be better at this, but it's not as if she can ask them for help. So Vanya squares up and slips Allison's hairpin out of her pocket, snapping it in half before getting to work.

Her hands are clammy and it only takes about four minutes for sweat to start to run into her eyes, but Vanya clears her mind (not without difficulty) and lets the old words from Father's lectures on lock-picking cloud her brain. She never thought she'd be thankful for all that boring drowning from the records at mealtimes, but when the lever finally raises and she can get half the pin to click the lock out of place without dropping it inside, Vanya nearly sends thanks to her dear dead dad. Instead, she shuffles the door open and, quiet as a mouse, peeks out.

Luther is in the room across from hers- she could tell that earlier, when he started snoring. Her brother may be a handsome man but whoever ends up sleeping next to him will definitely have to invest in some earplugs.

Diego is nodded off in a chair some five feet from her door in the direction of the stairs; _a lookout_, Vanya thinks, and somewhere in her head Sir Reginald sneers at his lack of diligence. Vanya simply thanks God for her siblings' underestimation of her abilities, and tries to avoid the worst of the squeaky floorboards on her way downstairs.

Leaving out the front door would be too easy; instead, Vanya unlatches it and pushes the door open a few inches, enough to be noticed if one were to look for it, but not too obvious to be automatically seen through as a ruse. When they search for her in the morning, they'll think she tried to push it shut behind her but was in too much of a rush to make sure it latched. It should buy her an hour, maybe two if she's lucky and Luther and Diego argue about which way she went.

Vanya's heading for the back door through the kitchen when a familiar crackling starts in the yard. For a moment Vanya thinks she's dreaming, that she's still upstairs and just had such a bad panic attack that she passed out like that one time when she was hitchhiking up in Maine at twenty-two and the driver wouldn't unlock the door. But then the blue light starts flashing, the crackling gets louder, and her legs are carrying her outside. She doesn't register the screen door banging shut in her wake. The wind has picked up drastically, but for once she can claim innocence.

Vanya stares, uncomprehending, as a figure falls through a hole in reality and lands yards away from her feet.

"Oh, God. Five?"


	4. Chapter 4

"Vanya."

She opens her mouth. She closes it. What is she supposed to say to the boy who disappeared without a trace ten years ago? She'd had to find out about his disappearance from a gossip magazine left in a pitstop bathroom on the coast of New Jersey, months after it happened. Vanya can still feel how tightly she had had to clench her teeth against the sobs to keep quiet.

"You look-"

"Terrible," Five finishes for her. He's scowling, dusting dirt off of a suit much too large for him.

"Younger," Vanya counters gently. He does, too. She remembers how he looked at seventeen, all sharp angles and floppy hair. He's still taller than she is, but now it's by only a few inches. He's covered in dirt and sweat and scowling, which fits her memories of Five, but her brother is not seventeen or eighteen or twenty-eight like he should be. He looks about thirteen or fourteen.

His mouth twists; Five had never liked people pointing out the obvious. He'd thought it a gesture of the idiotic. Well, with how her ears are ringing clear as a bell in her head, Vanya feels a bit like a gobsmacked idiot.

"I got the calculations wrong," he mutters, glaring down at his clothes. "Do me a favor and don't remind me."

She wants to reach out and touch his shoulder, make sure he's real, but something stops her for a moment. What if it's all a dream? The world around them is still hazy with the dawn, and it feels as if she's swimming through oatmeal when she moves to place trembling fingertips on his bicep. Five blinks at her; he doesn't smile, but something in his face softens.

_" Five ."_

_"Vanya."_

Their staring is broken when a hand comes down on her shoulder; it twinges in response, but she simply turns her head, unable to tear her hand away from her (little?) brother. Klaus and Diego look as surprised as she feels. She hears more than sees Allison gasp. Luther's soft "what the-" expresses more than Vanya could right now. For a moment it's like all of it- Ben, Dad, her kidnapping- it all fades away.

"Hey," Five says. "I heard Dad is dead. When are we celebrating?"

"You did _what_ to our sister?"

"We're protecting her!" Luther insists; his image as a gentle giant is somewhat ruined by the fact he's justifying abduction and imprisonment. Vanya feels something fierce in her chest purr as Five's admittedly intense glare brings him down a notch.

"You want to keep the family together, fine, great, good for you. Not like I don't get that." Five slams his hands down on the kitchen table. It rattles the sandwich plate before him. Behind Vanya's seat, Allison crosses her arms; she's been a warm if overbearing presence at Vanya's right hand ever since they found Vanya and Five in the backyard. No doubt she wants to talk about her rumor again. Vanya nearly gags at the thought.

(The front door has a bar across it now. Vanya knows she won't be strong enough to open it again. The back door will probably have a padlock by the end of today if the look on Diego's face is any indication. She is firmly back to square one.)

"But for God's sake, don't you think you could've done, oh, I don't know,_ literally anything else?"_

"She won't listen to us," Allison looks harried like Vanya has never quite seen her before, even that one time when they were nine and that guy with all the giant lasers was making a mess downtown. Vanya can't seem to find it in her to feel the same sympathy she did then.

"_ She_ is right here and would like you to stop talking about her in the third person."

"You haven't stopped to hear our side this entire time," Diego snaps at her from across the table.

"Maybe I would have if you hadn't kidnapped me immediately!" She wouldn't have.

"Have you even tried to talk this out?" Five looks around, surly, and groans in exasperation at Luther's shamefaced silence, the way Klaus picks at his suddenly fascinating nails. Diego growls, but leans back in his chair, content to grumble to himself. Allison drops into the chair by Vanya's side, and she tries not to let her hair stand on end with the proximity. Her sister's shoulder brushes hers, and Vanya winces. Klaus, who is sitting on top of the table, snaps his eyes to her face quickly.

"I can't believe this," Five mutters, slapping his sandwich together and taking a ferocious bite. "Idiots, all of you."

"Hey," Vanya protests quietly. Out of the corner of her eyes, she can see Allison's small smile. Five fixes her with a look that has her shrinking embarrassingly from a thirteen year old.

"You left," Five tells her plainly. "I don't know why, but you did. _That_, I was here for, remember? It was stupid then and it's stupid now."

Unbelievable. Vanya tries not to shake with anger; why couldn't her family, just once, let her make her own choices without interfering or passing judgement? Was that really too much to ask?

"Van," Klaus is slow to speak. He's still staring at her strangely. Vanya wonders if he's cottoned on to how she's favoring her left arm and feels something cold expand in her stomach. She hadn't wanted them to see- they'd only blame themselves. "Why_ did_ you run?"

"I don't think we need to rehash this right now," Allison cuts in smoothly. Her fingers are cool and calming when they light on Vanya's wrist. She tells herself she's too tired to shake them off.

But now Five is looking at her with interest. Her other brothers are not far behind.

"Yeah," Luther is thoughtful, which she doubts is a good look on him. "You- you weren't scared of us before what happened with Ben and we didn't-"

"You didn't. But I did."

"Vanya, _no._" Allison's hand tightens on her wrist, but Vanya is so very tired. She has been hiding from people she loves for eleven years. She's just gotten one brother back but that in itself is a stark reminder of the fact that she will never be able to bring the other home.

"I did, Allison. There's no use denying it."

Maybe this has been a long time in coming. Maybe this is what should have happened in the first place, all that time ago. Maybe if she'd stayed it would be over by now. Maybe she'd just have a knife between the eyes, or a hole in her chest and some final peace. Or maybe she deserved the pain she's put herself through all these years of cold, lonely nights where Vanya would stare at the ceiling, tears running from unseeing eyes. Maybe she deserves the guilt and grief that still wake her up, wracking her body so hard her ribs ache. Maybe if she'd told them before she'd have avoided all that; it could have been a mercy.

Diego leans forward, hands on the wood before him and for once, his eyes are a little softer when they land on Vanya. "Denying what, Van?"

"I killed Ben," Vanya says calmly. She has to raise her voice over her sister's protests.

There's a beat, and then Klaus erupts into nervous laughter. It dies out as abruptly as it began when he locks eyes with his sister. "You- you can't be serious."

"Vanya, we'd never believe that." Luther is looking at her with such compassion that the knife beside Five's hand rattles with her irritation. "You would never do that."

"But I did." She hates how small her voice sounds when it cracks.

"No, you didn't." Diego pushes away from the table, stalks to the sink and punches the counter. Distantly, Vanya wonders how he hasn't broken his hand on an inanimate object yet. "We all know who killed him- those fuckers came into our _home_ . Ben was just trying to protect you and they-"

"Tore him to pieces," Klaus supplies when Diego doesn't finish. He sounds wreaked. His hands search the pockets of his skirt and Vanya knows he's itching for a fix. Her brother has been high ever since they were kids; it's not like Sir Reginald actually cared what his son was getting up to, not when he was already hauling in the big bucks off the street side hustle he had going on. She wonders how long it has been since he saw a spirit.

"No." Vanya somehow finds the strength to shake off her sister despite the other woman's efforts. Her hands are numb but her heart is beating hard. She can barely hear her own voice over the rushing in her ears. It's finally here, the moment of truth, and Vanya can barely stand to look at any of them as they witness her shame. "Those people might have started it, but I finished the job. It was me. But I- I didn't mean to, I swear I didn't."

"No one thinks you wanted to kill Ben." Allison looks around as if daring someone to object. Diego looks a little offended that she'd think so little of them, and Klaus ducks his head, a little green around the gills. "But like you just said, you wouldn't have done it-"

"But I _did_ . I did."

"No," Diego and Klaus deny in synchronization. Vanya wants to scream, to beg, maybe to die. (She may have wanted that for eleven years now. She may deserve it.)

"How would you have even done it?" At Luther's question Vanya looks up from where she'd been studying her hands. She is so very drained. All this talk, it's getting them nowhere. It never has.

Five has been suspiciously quiet, but he speaks up now, eyes boring into hers. "You know how."

The lights flicker as she nods. Allison takes in a sharp breath.

"I thought- when I rumored-"

"It didn't take," Vanya tells her. The she stands. Her brother tenses beside the sink, but he doesn't go for a knife. She can tells Luther is checking to see if he can cover the door if she makes a break for it, but he needn't bother. Vanya knows it would be of no use.

And here she'd thought telling them might give her an easy way out.

"I can't do this. I just- I'm tired." Vanya doesn't stop when more than one person calls her name. She makes for the stairs again but this time her steps are sluggish; her heart feels shattered, fragmentation caught in her lungs, her throat.

She hears Five mutter something about coffee and a crack. Someone's eyes are on her back as she closes the door to her room. Vanya doesn't bother with the armchair this time.

_(At least it's all out in the open,_ Sir Reginald pipes up.

_I really cannot stand you,_ she tells him, and lays down on her side. She doesn't watch the sun rise, but her eyes are open.)

Five comes to see her the next morning. He looks only mildly perturbed to see she has not moved.

Her room had been left unlocked the entire night.

The door closes behind her too small brother and Vanya only just catches a glimpse of the hallway outside. Klaus is wringing his hands; their eyes meet for a second and Vanya catches her breath. He looks_ terrible_ : all sweaty and feverish and weak. She hasn't seen him that way in a long time- maybe since their father took all his stash away after that failed mission when they were fifteen. He'd spent the night in the bathroom; she spent the night bringing him cold compresses and glasses of water he threw up in minutes. The door shuts just as Klaus opens his mouth.

Then there's only Five.

"I don't want to talk about it," Vanya says flatly. Five's lips quirk up at the corners.

"Good. I hate talking on principle." She raises her eyebrows and doesn't point out the fact that he used to while away the hours talking her ear off about physics and calculus. No need to get him started again.

"Why are you here?"

He gestures vaguely to her left side and asks, "What's with your arm?"

Oh. That. Right. Vanya shrugs, levering herself up to sit against the headboard and ignoring the twinge and ache the use of her left arm causes. She should really do something about that. But every time Vanya thinks about asking for help, the words get caught in her mouth.

( _You think you deserve it,_ her father surmises.

_No. I know I do._ She informs him dully.)

"It looks dislocated."

"How do you know what a dislocated shoulder looks like under a jacket?" Five smirks. Vanya rolls her eyes and nods.

"I- fell."

"Oh, really?" He doesn't sound very convinced, something hardening in his face as he throws a glare over his shoulder like he can make their siblings feel his disdain through solid wood. She wouldn't put it passed him.

"Yeah. A couple of times, actually."

Five nods, and hauls a first aid kit the size of his torso onto the bed. He flips the top open, rummaging through it and replies, "Well you're in luck then, because I know how to pop it back in. You'll need some painkillers, though. I've seen you wincing this entire time and I've only been back for a day. How long have you let it be?"

Vanya shifts, always uncomfortable with the scrutiny of overprotective siblings. Technically Five is the littlest sibling now; shouldn't she be behaving this way for him, not the other way around? "One- no, two days. What day is it?"

"Thursday." Five is absent-minded for a second before looking sharply at her. "That was stupid, letting it go so long. You'll have a shit ton of swelling. Now hold still."

Vanya does as she is told and bites her tongue for good measure. Afterward, Five shakes three pills into her palm and caps the bottle. He leaves the kit open on the bedspread and pokes her in the ribs. "Scoot over."

When he finishes climbing up Five is a warm length pressed to her side. It's soothing against the pulsing beat of pain radiating down her limb. Vanya hesitates before resting her head gently against his- she remembers how protective he was of his hair in his teens. Five sighs but doesn't complain.

"Where did you go?" The question rattles her heart when Vanya pushes it out.

Five laces their fingers and asks, "Does it really matter? I'm back now."

It does matter, but she's being held hostage and he's thirteen again and they've both got their secrets that took them away from each other for eleven years, so Vanya lets it slide. For now.

She's sleepy again- Vanya would suspect one of the others of drugging her, but there are only so many lines her family will cross to keep her with them, and she knows that is not one of them. Not after what Father did to her.

Before she can doze off though, something catches her eye. "Five is that- blood?"

There is a splotch of red on his collar. Five shifts slightly but doesn't pull away. "Just a scrape from when I fell, Vanya. Don't worry so much."

Hours later, Vanya wakes in the night. Five's head is leaning against hers. Their hands are still entwined, but Vanya pulls away carefully, wrinkling her nose at how sweaty her palm is. None of the siblings have slept in the same bed since they were four. Sir Reginald saw to that.

For a while she's unsure of what woke her, until a light flickers outside her window. Vanya pads over, twitching the curtain aside. The light blinks at her from between the trees at the edge of the property, then winks out. Again, for a longer moment this time. Off. On, off, on again. A long pause, then off again.

H.E.L.L.O. V.

Vanya shakes her head, air caught in her chest. It can't be what she thinks she's seeing.

D.I.D. U. M.I.S.S. M.E.

_It is._ Vanya wracks her brain for someone who knows Morse code, who'd know where the house is, who would be willing to help her, the drifter.

_Oh_. But it can't be- not after three years.

N.E.E.D. A. H.A.N.D.

_Leonard._


	5. Chapter 5

_Vanya's sixteen and playing Trotsky for the fifth time that morning. She's thinking of cutting her hair; it's been irritating her all day, getting caught on her bow and messing with her notes._

_There's rapid footsteps in the hall; Number Seven rolls her eyes and wonders what they could possibly be up to now. It had better not be another prank on her- it took hours for Luther to get her out of the bathroom last time. She's really not in the mood._

_Someone knocks on her door and then Five's voice says in a urgent whisper, "Oh come on, we can't just wait out here, Dad might see-"_

_"Mom sa-says w-we have to res-res-"_

_"Respect," Ben cuts in helpfully. There's a smack and a yelp._

_"Respect each oth-ther's priv-vacy."_

_"Come in," Vanya calls, if only to shut them up. Surprisingly, every single one of her siblings proceeds to tumble inside. Ben, who had opened the door, is pressed firmly against the wall, hand stuck on her doorknob. He squints his eyes and grimaces at her._

_Seven lowers her bow. "What are you guys doing?"_

_"Vanya!" Klaus bounces to his feet easily, having wiggled dexterously out from under Luther and Allison's tangled limbs. He's got this crazy light in his eyes and his hair is wild, his grin crooked. He's waving a book in her face. "You'll never guess what I found!"_

_"I probably could if you weren't holding it so close to my face," Vanya rejoins, going cross-eyed. Five pulls on his brother's shoulder and Klaus reluctantly steps back._

_Immediately, Vanya's eyes can focus and she catches sight of the letters embossed on the red leather cover. "Is that..?"_

_"Yep." Klaus pops the 'P'. "You don't want to know how long it took me to get my hands on this."_

_"Weeks," Ben supplies. He has at some point closed and locked her bedroom door. He and Diego lean against it like they're some kind of skinny bodyguards. "I helped."_

_There's assorted grumblings and retorts, but Vanya is staring at her father's journal. At a specific page in her father's journal._

_"No…" Her voice is squeaky and soft. Her eyes are blurry. "No, I-I. I would have known."_

_Vanya looks up at them all, her family of heroes and cries, "I would have known!"_

_Allison is biting her lip, wringing her hands. "But you wouldn't have. Check the next page."_

_Vanya does. When she looks up, betrayed, Allison flings her hands in the air. "I- I'm so sorry. I don't even remember it. But I- I'm really sorry, V."_

_"He-he used you- and me- my pills- and I didn't even know." Number Seven doesn't know what she's feeling; fear and anger and hope, desperate, all-consuming hope, tangle in the pit of her stomach in a confusing knot._

_"But you know now," Five says. He looks uncomfortable with her tears but places a light hand on her shoulder anyway. "He wanted to use you- like he does all of us- but you wouldn't do it."_

_"Good on you, sis," Klaus cuts in. Five rolls his eyes, but it makes some of Vanya's tears clear up, so he'll take what he can get._

_"And so he made you forget, made our sister do that to you. But now we know."_

_"Now you know," Luther clarifies, looking up at her earnestly. He has not moved from where he fell in the first place, content to sit cross legged by her desk. "Now, you can be just like us!"_

_She looks up, and for the first time realizes they are all looking at her. Klaus is on tiptoe, all boundless energy and hopeful eyes. Five is close by, serious and calm. Allison looks so contrite Vanya can do nothing but forgive her, seeing that four year old girl who gave Number Seven her favorite doll during a terrifying thunderstorm. Luther and Ben and Diego are uncomfortable and awkward and there for her all the same._

_Tentatively, through tears, Number Seven smiles._

Vanya wakes up gasping, sweating, utterly disoriented. Midday sun hits her right in the face; she'd forgotten to close the curtains completely last night. Five and the medical kit are both gone, but her door is unlocked when she tries the handle.

She finds Five in their father's study. He is comically small in Sir Reginald's seat behind the desk. He grunts a greeting at her around a coffee mug, attention absorbed by a large tome in his hands. Same old Five.

"Interesting reading?" It's a paltry excuse for a conversation starter. Vanya winces, but her brother doesn't seem to notice. He shrugs and tosses the book onto the desk with a heavy thump. Then he gestures for her to sit. She does so, feeling a little like a kid sent to the principal's office.

"Not really. How's your shoulder?"

"Better. Still aches, but you did a good job with it. Thanks, by the way."

Five hums. He's looking out the window. Vanya does too, and catches the beautiful view of the grounds. The sight of that wall around the property makes her think of the state penitentiary, how it had looked through the rain that one night when she was twenty-six and alone and stranded downtown. Vanya stops looking, feeling more than a little ill.

"So what are we going to do?"

He looks at her quizzically, like _she's_ the one who isn't making any sense these days. "Do about what?"

"Our brothers and sister kidnapped me, Five," Vanya reminds him with forced calm. It takes pretty much all she has to keep a handle on her emotions these days. The papers and pens that litter her father's desk start vibrating until Vanya curls her fist and lets her nails bite into the meat of her palm.

"Oh. Yes."

"...So? Are you going to help me out of here or not?"

His eyes are too shifty; Vanya has been on the street enough in the past eleven years to know when someone is hiding something from her. "I just got back myself, Vanya. I'm very tired. And I haven't exactly mastered jumping with other people yet."

That takes some of the fight out of her. Vanya settles back. She has to at least try to be understanding of Five, even if it seems he nor anyone else here can extend her the same courtesy. "You never told me where you went."

"_ You_ never told _me_ where _you_ went."

God, she forgot how much she hated talking to her siblings. "I was around. Up and down the coast, mostly. I tried to stay where I'd still get news of the Umbrella Academy."

"You could've done that very easily from home," Five points out none too gently. Vanya scowls at him.

"Excuse me for not wanting to stick around after masked madmen broke into my home because my family is apparently made up of super villains without my knowledge."

"We could've protected you."

That- that makes her recoil, too reminiscent of what her siblings have been saying for days. Did they get to him? Is he just like them now? He said he was tired, and she understood that- but he didn't have to jump her anywhere. He didn't even have to jump himself, really. He could open the door for her, slip her the key after dark, leave the lock unlatched after dinner…

But she's got to be overreacting. "It wasn't about that."

"Ben."

His name still makes her want to cry. "Yeah. It- it was_ really_ bad, Five. _I_ was really bad."

Five smiles just a little and Vanya doesn't like it at all. "Join the club."

"You're not going to convince me it wasn't my fault?"

Her brother shrugs. "Oh, I don't think it was, but I know you won't see it that way no matter what I say. So why waste the energy?"

Her pragmatic brother. They sit quietly for a moment; Five studies his folded hands. "I went to find the people who did it. That's where I was for ten years. Chasing Ben's killers."

Vanya's blood runs cold. "Did- did you-"

"Find them? Oh yeah. Well, more like they found me."

"Who were they?"

"People who want to end the world." He smirks at her over the desk. "Yeah, that's about what I looked like when I found out. They called themselves the Commission; offered me a job if you can believe it. They kept going on and on about the timeline and how they had to preserve it for the apocalypse to take place, blah blah blah."

_" The apocalypse? "_

Her brother is entirely too blasé. "Yeah. Not exactly an ideal job career, wouldn't you say?"

"So…" Vanya fiddles with her hands. Her heart is beating as fast as a hummingbird's. Five is incredibly calm. But why shouldn't he be, really? Their lives are already so goddamn weird. "So time traveling murderers killed Ben to make sure the end of the world happened? What did you do?"

"Oh, I killed them."

It feels like she'd been sucker punched. Vanya gasps for breath silently, but Five doesn't seem to notice. He's back to looking out the window, eyes distant. That splash of color on his collar is so, so, so very red. "Well, some of them, at least. The ones who killed Ben, they're six feet under, I can tell you that confidently. They took the longest to find; apart from having to figure out their plans for stopping all life on earth I had to hop back and forth through time chasing those bastards. It was a hell of a trip. After that, it was just a matter of making sure to snuff out any of the other billion or so plans to end the world they had."

Vanya's world is reeling; her vision is spinning before her like after a bad night of drinking and she knows if she tried to stand up now her knees would give out. Her brother, a murderer. A time warping, teleporting murderer. She is going to be sick.

Five is still droning on. "I mean, I can't be sure that all the plans to end everything have been eradicated, I suppose. I only spent thirty years there- but I'm pretty confident that last mission was the tipping point. A lot can hinge on one bad influence, I guess you could say."

_Thirty years ._ His is a murderer and a time traveler and so old and he could have helped her get out if he wanted to, she knows that now. He could save her; instead he sits there just like their father, hiding behind that big desk and all his self-importance.

And then something terrible and cold spreads through her chest, numbing her extremities. "Five." Vanya's voice sounds odd to her own ears, as if she's speaking underwater. "How did you know that Dad died?"

Her brother is gone from his seat in one moment and perched on the edge of the desk beside her the next. He takes her hands delicately in his, as if she's something precious and breakable that he has to be careful with. Five's face is so young and wise. "Vanya, you're hyperventilating. You have to breathe."

Vanya cannot stand to be touched for another moment. She gets to her feet so fast her chair tips over and she nearly stumbles into it to get away. How is she supposed to get away from a boy who could be literally anywhere in the world without a second's notice?

"How did you know about Dad, Five? _How did you know?"_

His eyes are harder now. Five gestures to the office, all the cold, impersonal furniture and the imposing ghost of their father lingering in the fabric of the walls. "Look at who he was, Vanya. Look at what he did to us, what he did to you. He _drugged_ you. He made us killers and thieves and never once gave us a chance to be better than he was."

If she is sobbing Vanya can't feel it except for in her chest, where air hitches and catches in her lungs. She heaves, near convulsing.

"If I didn't do it the world could have ended." Five follows as she backs away, his hands up in a parody of harmlessness. Vanya denies him with a shake of her head; her hair sticks to her cheeks and everything is too hot and too cold and so very confusing. The doorknob pokes her in the back. She grasps it.

"He deserved it," her brother insists, and it is an echo of a death kneel that already stroked for their father.

Vanya tears open the door and flees.

That night, Vanya pulls the armchair under the doorknob again. Klaus comes knocking, begging for entrance and conversation. Vanya stuffs her fingers in her ears and screams until he goes away.

She waits for complete darkness. The medical tape that she hide away last night sticks well enough that she can rope three bed sheets and two of the four-poster's curtains together. The safety pins come in handy too. As she descends Vanya reflects that they really should have put bars on her window.

The climb down is terrifying; Vanya had looped the end of the sheets to the bedpost, but that thing is at least as old as she is and rickety to boot. The sheets rip twice and Vanya has never been very good at climbing ropes, as evidenced by the burns she'll be sporting tomorrow morning on her palms and the insides of her thighs. The tape gives out on the last sheet and she goes tumbling to the ground; thankfully Vanya was only about ten feet up at that point, so her back doesn't break.

She lays there for a long moment, the air knocked out of her, and waits to be caught. But no one comes running. The grass is dewy and springy under her touch and must have muffled her fall. It doesn't crunch in the slightest as she makes her way to the back right wall. There's a gate there where deliveries can be made or the trash taken out the the street.

Leonard beams at her when Vanya steps out of the shadows. The bars of the gate make strange, hollow shadows across his face. "Hello, beautiful. Ready to get outta here?"


	6. Chapter 6

Leonard is parked around the corner. The air inside his sedan is stale and warm. Vanya cracks a window and tries to breathe through the nausea. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

Leonard never knew when to shut up. "You're out of there now, Vanya, you're safe. You can trust me, even if you can't trust your family."

Something about the way he says it, the wheedling, saccharine tone, needles at her skin. Vanya shivers and avoids eye contact. Leonard doesn't seem to need a response, though, because the next second they are peeling out and leaving her home behind.

( _He's right, you know,_ her father admonishes.

_The fact that you just called him trustworthy is not a vote of confidence,_ Vanya replies, but she did already get into the car.)

Leonard's home in Bricktown looks exactly like it did when she stayed with him. When Vanya walks in the door it's as if Five has thrown her three years into the past.

"Come on in," he motions to the couch, hands fluttering. She doesn't remember him being this nervous. Vanya herself feels numb, like everything around her is a great distance away and underwater to boot. His voice sounds strange in her ears. Everything is so cold. Maybe she's in shock. Maybe she gave herself a concussion in that fall.

"I'm here, Vanya. I'm here for you, just like I always will be."

She's losing time too. One minute they're standing in his doorway, the next she's curled into a corner of the couch. There's a mug of tea that smells too strongly floral in her hands. Vanya hurries to put it down before she drops it. Leonard is kneeling on the floor by her knees. He's making this constant shushing sound accompanied by soothing motions that set Vanya's teeth on edge. She resists the urge to shake off the hand on her shin.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Leonard says. She wishes people would stop treating her like a scared animal. "It's okay. You're safe. They aren't going to hurt you."

"They wouldn't have hurt me."

Leonard looks taken aback; his hand stills in it's stroking. "Vanya- they're evil. They kidnapped you."

"My family isn't evil. They- they did kidnap me out of some misguided attempt at familial bonding or whatever. But they wouldn't have hurt me. I know that. I know that."

"Vanya…"

"No. No. I- they have to be better than that. They have to be."

"They've hurt people Vanya. They hurt you. They're not going to stop. You know that."

A thousand memories flash through her mind; Luther reaching up and yanking her kite out of a tree she'd stupidly flown it right into, hands gentle when he hands it back. Luther ripping the steel door off a bank vault on the news, her brother's grin fierce as his hands closed around green paper, only for the money to turn up in a collection box for the local orphanage a week later.

"You have to let go of them. They don't actually care about you, Vanya."

Diego calling her cell phone every night after she left before she broke it a year later, his young, scared voice echoing in her ears when she couldn't stop herself from answering, if only to hear him for a moment before hanging up. Diego's knives turning up in a businessman's corpse after the man was reportedly let off of a sexual assault charge for a bribe.

"They just want to use you. They know what you're capable of and they want it for themselves."

Allison twirling her around the living room when she'd snuck away from training, giggling as they sang to each other. Allison plastered across the front of a newspaper, covered in ash and mouth open in the middle of a rumor as police pointed guns at her, a child tucked safely under her arm as fire raged in the building behind her.

"They don't think you're strong enough to do this on your own; they want to lock you away, lock your power away, and call it safety."

Klaus shaking in her arms when he crawled into her bed after nightmares, his cold feet pressed to hers. Klaus strung out and bloodied, sneering, appearing on the news in a notoriously bad part of town only for the drug ring there to spontaneously fall apart a day later.

"They could never understand you like I do, Vanya."

Five, wild-eyed and frenzied with his latest experiment, slowing down just to help her understand the math. Five, cold and hard as men came banging at the front door, telling her in a very steady voice to go upstairs. Five never coming back.

"They never loved you."

Ben smiling softly as he read to her in the early Sunday light of the garden, their heads together and legs tangled. Ben, eyes heavy with guilt, hugging her to him as shots rang out, arms desperately tight, only to go limp against her in the ensuing silence.

"You left for a reason, remember? You told me once you couldn't stomach who they became behind your back. There's a reason your father hid what they were doing from you all those years- you're better than them and he knew it. You wouldn't have stood for it, and you didn't. You left because they weren't your family, not really. Not like I am."

Vanya turns her head away from his searching eyes. She can't stand for Leonard to see how ashamed she is. "I didn't run because I couldn't love them after what they have done. I ran because I was scared for them."

"Of what," Leonard breathes.

"Of me."

_The door of the Umbrella Academy is blown off its hinges at exactly 10:02 AM on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008._

_Five tells Vanya to run._

_She hauls herself up the stairs two at a time, lungs fit to burst. The chandelier in the foyer sways dangerously and she takes a minute on the landing to breathe deeply. It wouldn't do for their father to find out she wasn't taking her meds because she knew about her powers in the middle of a crisis. Stomping feet and her sister's shouts proceed gunshots and Vanya gasps, hands tight on the banister. Should she go back? She's supposed to be crazy powerful, even relatively untrained as she is-_

_"Vanya!" Ben's voice hisses at her, and Vanya turns to catch his wide eyes. He loops an arm around her and pulls her bodily up the last few steps, pressing them down the hallway towards her music room. "You have to hide, they might get through Diego and Allison and be up here any second!"_

_"Why are they here?" She whispers back frantically, hands wringing. Ben shushes her and pulls the door closed behind them. There's a crash downstairs and Luther bellows like an ox. "Who are they? Do they want something from the Academy?"_

_"That's what I'm guessing."_

_"Well that's- you guys can take them right? You're heroes, you can take them down."_

_Something in Ben's face breaks. "Vanya, you have to understand that this might turn out bad. And- and it might have been earned."_

_"What?"_

_Men and women's voices call military style orders to each other below as the thuds of flesh being struck resound throughout the house. Klaus cries out brokenly and Five yelps. But Vanya only has eyes for Ben._

_"We're not the heroes you think we are, Van. Dad- the missions he sends us on-"_

_Ben bites his lip. Boots are tromping up the steps and he pushes her back from the door. For a split second before it opens, his eyes are so sad. Somewhere there is yelling and gunshots and her family is screaming. Here, Ben shoves Vanya back one more time and clenches his fists._

_Then the door cracks open._

_"Vanya, get back!"_

_"I'm not leaving you!"_

_"We aren't who you think we are, Van- this has been a long time in coming. We've been prepared for this, you just have to trust us. We're going to keep you safe."_

_"What are you talking about, Ben?"_

_But Ben never replies, just gives her one last pleading glance before turning to face the intruders. His chest rips open and almost immediately four of them are torn apart. Guns fire and Vanya thinks she screams but it's too loud to tell; she does know that blood spatters across her cheeks, her neck, her tongue. It is warm._

_She comforts herself with the knowledge that this will all be over soon- her brothers and sister are heroes, a team of them, no matter what Ben was ranting about. They can do this. They can save her._

_The bullet that punctures through her brother in the next second punches all thought out of her mind except his name. Vanya won't notice that it embedded itself in her upper right arm for hours to come; she'll have the scar the rest of her life._

_"Ben!"_

_Her brother nearly collapses back into Vanya's arms, struggling to keep his feet. His tee shirt is turning glossy and wet, but the black material hides how bad the wound is from her eyes. Vanya grasps at his shoulders, supporting him with her body. Ben twists around, trying to clutch at her, pulling out strands of her hair in the process. She doesn't notice._

_He's making a terrible choked noise and it takes a second for her to realize that it's Vanya's name. "Ben, Ben, stay with me. Keep breathing, it's alright. Ben!"_

_The soldiers have finished reloading, but they aren't firing. Vanya can hear the clink of their boots striking bullet casings, the soft murmur of their orders back and forth. They have a clear shot on her now, Vanya knows, but she can't care about being vulnerable when her hands are so red and Ben is breathing so shallowly. She has to keep her brother standing._

_Ben looks over her shoulder, eyes widening. He must see them- see their guns raised. For a brief second it looks to Vanya like his heart might just give out on the spot. Instead, he seems to gather strength from somewhere and turns them, fast, so she can't do anything but move with him._

_Ben wraps himself around his sister and the guns start firing. He falls apart in Vanya's arms. She can feel it all; the bullets are relentless and Ben jerks in her arms. The cloth of his shirt and jacket tear apart and drape over her, fall to the floor, drift in the air. Gunpowder clogs her nose. The hardwood around them is shattering._

_And the guns are so very loud._

_Vanya shrieks her pain to the high heavens and everything explodes. The next few minutes she can't rightly remember, but when she opens her eyes, everything is dust and pain and blood. There is not enough left of them to identify where one body begins and another ends. The quiet is loud in her ringing ears._

_Ben is still in her arms. Vanya lowers them both to the ground. She doesn't realize she's sobbing until she catches her breath on smoke and hacks. Tears drip onto Ben's slack face. But he can't be gone, not Ben, not Ben..._

_"Ben! Ben!"_

_She tries to move her arms, to get her hands on his face and shake him awake and that's when she feels the thing protruding from his back. It is long and hard and not a bullet._

_It is a hard task shifting Ben's dead weight into her lap. When Vanya sees it she moans a denial. No, no, no, please. It can't be, she can't have done this, please, anything but this. She will do anything, if only God would take this back._

_But the world is not kind to a Hargreeves, and Vanya's violin bow stays firmly planted in Ben's heart._

"You were protecting yourself," Leonard says quietly after a long time. "Your siblings should have told you what was happening."

"They loved me too much to admit it," Vanya reasons. She still can't look him in the eye. Her face is hot and wet. "Ben- I think he was ashamed. I think he didn't want to be what our father made him be anymore."

"He still did it. He still stole and fought and hurt people and lied to you. He was still a super villain, even if he felt bad about it. He knew he'd pay the price."

"_ Don't_ say that about my dead brother."

He's looking at her; Vanya can feel Leonard's eyes boring a hole in her head. "I'm sorry that happened, Vanya. I really am. You know I love you."

She shifts uncomfortably but doesn't refute it. He's loved her right from the start; he hadn't even told the cops where she was when they came looking for a missing person. It was why she always used to hang out in his wood shop when she was in town. It was also why she left- that much love, after the truth about her family spilled out with Ben's blood, made Vanya sick to her stomach. She couldn't take it in the end.

"I love them," she tells him and supposes the anger that passes over his face is warranted. "I couldn't handle knowing I could hurt them so them so easily._ Kill_ them so easily."

"You're a good person, Vanya." Leonard's stare is intense and Vanya knows what he means before he says it. It rankles anyway. "Not many people would love the Umbrella Academy after what they've done."

"You're taking the fact I have weird, murderous powers really well," she settles for instead. Leonard smiles softly and Vanya can feel her shoulders relax.

"I like weird," he grins. For the first time in what feels like years, Vanya smiles too. She doesn't know if she means it.


	7. Chapter 7

Leonard is a lot clingier than Vanya remembers, but she may have a habit of looking at the past through rose colored glasses.

She can't get a moment alone here; if she's in the kitchen making herself food Leonard is just behind her shoulder asking her if she'd like him to take over. If she's watching the news for any indication of what her family is doing, Leonard is beside her on the couch asking if she'd like to watch a movie. Hell, if she's in the shower, Leonard is in the hallway asking if she'd like more shampoo. It's honestly at the point that Vanya is wondering if she ever should have left home. At least her family were relatively content to let her do her own thing inside the house without much interference. Leonard is doing an unsettlingly good impression of her own shadow. She went to sleep on the couch that night just praying she wouldn't wake up to him carrying her to bed. That, at least, he spares her dignity from.

"Are you sure you'll be alright while I check in on the store? I can just close it for a few days."

Vanya feels how strained her smile is and ducks her head, letting her hair hide her from his view. " Of _course_ I'm sure, Leonard. I'm a big girl, I can handle half a day on my own."

The look on his face says he highly doubts that, and she'd probably be angrier at him if she hadn't had to tie her bed sheets into a rope to get out of her own house yesterday. As it is she can only sigh in relief under her breath when he shrugs uneasily and agrees that he'll see her around seven.

"Perfect," Vanya mutters the second the door closes behind him. Finally, some peace and quiet.

A _lot_ of peace and quiet, actually. Oh, hell. Her family has spoiled even this for her, haven't they?

Within four hours, Vanya has eaten lunch, watched too many news programs to count (she's always meant to learn more about climate change and now she's even more depressed than when she woke up this morning) and beaten herself in scrabble twice. She's an awful cheater, by the way. As a last resort, after she has exhausted Leonard's less than extensive library, Vanya takes to wandering the halls.

( _You're being nosy,_ Sir Reginald admonishes.

_It runs in the family,_ she snipes back.)

Leonard's house is small. This means she finds the attic pretty quickly.

Vanya did not think she'd be spending the afternoon looking around at mangled pictures of her family.

"What the fuck," she breathes, hauling herself up the last few steps of the ladder with her forearms. Dust catches in her throat and nose, making her eyes water. After she's done coughing, Vanya glances around, unsure if she feels a strange sense of awe or fear.

The place is a shrine to the Umbrella Academy, in the worst kind of way. The whole floor is littered with old wanted posters, the sketches showing her siblings progressing in age from barely more than children to young adults, to people who really should know better. Five's wanted poster is given a place of honor, though, taped to a wooden beam overhead with his eyes crossed out in red pen. Another poster, one with Ben's young features depicted, received the same fate. A photo the paper ran of her father, the headline "NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL BILLIONAIRE FINALLY BITES THE DUST; UMBRELLA ACADEMY TO SPREAD HIS ASHES" carefully clipped out underneath it, hangs beside Five's poster. It too has red marks over his eyes.

The room is sparse; one of the only pieces of furniture is a table to the right, covered in memorabilia. Vanya draws closer and feels sick to her stomach. Back in the day, when the Umbrella Academy were young and couldn't quite be seen as a threat to the public yet, they'd run a series of toys for Christmas. This had included a line of action figures; Vanya can recall that Ben had been torn between offended and amused that they had chosen_ him_ to give kung fu grip to.

These action figures are mounted on a small glass pedestal in the center of the table. Each one is burned or destroyed in one way or another; Vanya reaches out tentatively and fingers Allison's melted hair. There is a plastic lump beside hers that is nearly black. It takes her a moment to realize that must be Luther. Beside the toys, a stack of envelopes gathers dust. Feeling quite disconnected from her own body, Vanya reaches out to wipe away the muck, only to see her own address staring back at her.

"What?" She snatches up the open envelope and tugs out yellowing paper. The letter is addressed to the Umbrella Academy, circa seventeen years ago. Leonard would have been ten_. She_ would have been ten.

The words are blurred with age; the graphite used to pencil them is so faded she has to carry the letter over to the skylight just to have a hope to decipher it.

_...I really think I'm special, like your kids. I'm born on the same day! I know I have powers, I can feel it inside. My Dad, he doesn't think so, but I just know if you gave me a chance-_

Fan mail. She's holding decades old fan mail written in Leonard's hand. She shuffles through a few more.

_I wish you'd get back to me, but I know being heroes must take up a lot of your time-_

_Why aren't you answering me? If you had six special kids, why don't you think there could be one more?_

_Are you ignoring me? Why would you do that? I thought you were the good guys._

_Please, things are really bad here, I need to talk to someone who can save me-_

_I HATE YOU. YOU'RE NOT HEROES. YOU'RE MONSTERS._

_Someone should stop you for good._

Oh God.

"What the _fuck_ ," Vanya says softly, feelingly. What the hell is going on?

( _He's crazy,_ her father points out.

_Yeah, I think I'm kinda getting that,_ she replies numbly.)

There's a map spread out on the wall opposite the table, which she takes a moment to realize is actually a set of blueprints. A very familiar set of blueprints.

"He knew where my room was," Vanya realizes. He knew too much. Leonard always knew exactly what to say to her, how to act around her. Did he always know who she was? Who her family was? He always acted like they were old friends; he protected her when she needed him. He never once asked questions.

"He said-" Vanya mutters, but she can't quite grasp what the sentence is actually going to be. There's something nagging at the back of her brain. What did Leonard say last night?

"He said- said they'd lock me up- for- for-"

The clouds outside the skylight drift away a bit and the late afternoon sunlight filters in. Vanya is distracted from her musings by the glint of red from the far end of the room. There is one more table, a tiny rickety old thing, shoved up against the wall. It's not so much a place of honor as a side note, but something about the way it's out passed all the rest of the mess draws her near to it.

She steps over the wanted posters and the ripped up magazine covers. Everywhere, her brothers and sisters watch her with scratched out eyes. For a moment she gets waylaid by what can only be a woodcarving of her father. Sir Reginald is mutilated, his wooden features disfigured with agony and fear; he is on his knees, one gnarled, knotted hand reaching out in vain. Some of the fingers have broken off. The detail is impeccable- there are tiny fissures gouged into the replica of his monocle. The way he clutches his other hand to his chest draws her eyes down further, to the great puncture wound Leonard's hands had lovingly crafted in Sir Reginald's chest. There may even be wooden blood dripping from between grasping fingers. It is an amazing art piece, and makes what Five did to Sir Reginald look like a mercy.

"Why do I always attract the crazy ones?" Vanya asks him. True to form, her father does not provide her with any useful information.

But that red is still at the end of the room. She knows what it is before she even touches the leather cover.

"Son of a bitch," Vanya murmurs, and fingers "R. H." for the first time in eleven years. The tickle at the back of her mind is an itch now; it's something to do with last night, something about what he'd said to calm her down out of her panic attack. She scratches it. "'They'd lock me up for my powers.' And I hadn't even told him yet- fuck. _Fuck."_

Her father's eyes have seemed to follow her through the room. She meets them, grimacing at his silent scowl. "I gotta get outta here."

Which of course means that this is the moment the front door opens downstairs and feet tromp up the stairs.

"Oh, why me? " But living alone has given Vanya at least enough practice getting in and out of places she shouldn't be rather quietly, and she scrambles out and down the ladder with a modicum of grace. The shoving the ladder back up takes precious seconds and she's huffing and jumping up and down on the balls of her feet trying to make sure it all won't fall back down again for a minute there, but when Leonard clears the landing there's nothing left but her sweaty, red face and short breath to incriminate her. The cord for the attic stairs swings a little too wildly to be the breeze from the air conditioner. Vanya smiles blindingly.

"Told you I could take care of myself."

( _This song and dance is getting old._ Sir Reginald snarks.

_Tell me about it ,_ Vanya agrees.)

"I wanted to talk to you about last night," Leonard calls over his shoulder on his way to the kitchen. She's nearer to the front door than he is- but now he's looking. Shit.

"You're gonna have to be more specific," Vanya jokes, and hopes he doesn't see the sweat on her brow. The living room lights are dim and night is falling fast outside, and hopefully his eyesight is bad.

"Of course, you probably don't remember much, huh?" His face is entirely too soft and open. Vanya has the strong urge to throw a lamp at him. Beside the couch, the fireplace poker wiggles in its stand and Vanya glares at it. "You were pretty freaked out. Not that I blame you- with what your family did to you, and all."

"Yeah, I guess." How fast is he? Not faster than Diego or Luther, surely? He can't teleport, that's for sure. "I mean, everybody has family issues, right?"

Leonard doesn't laugh. His gaze is nothing short of pitying. A vase on the mantle rattles. "Vanya, I'm serious. We have to talk."

"About what?" Does she sound too confrontational? Should she sound confrontational?

"We need to talk," Leonard pauses- he's more dramatic that Diego, Vanya didn't think that was possible- and leans forward, palms flat on the counter. His eyes bore into hers. "About what we're going to do about the Umbrella Academy."

Vanya's heart picks up; she recalls in vivid detail how deep the gouges across her sibling's eyes in those posters were. "What are we going to do, then?"

"We're going to end them. Or, well, you are."


	8. Chapter 8

"What are you talking about, Leonard?"

It is very important for Vanya to be calm right now. It is imperative that she is level-headed. It is absolutely paramount that she does not panic. She knows that if she does anything to let on to the fact that Vanya knows what Leonard wants from her- wants for her family- she may as well kill herself for him.

This does not stop her from wanting to scream.

"Think about it, Vanya," Leonard says, and his voice is soft and cajoling and how could she ever have fallen for this? Leonard and her family- they've all just played Vanya for a fool, haven't they? Had a big laugh behind her back, for years. God, she's an idiot.

( _Did you expect anything more?_ Sir Reginald sneers.

_After what you did to me? Not really, and I'm still disappointed._ She admits.)

"I am thinking about it. I'm thinking this sounds crazy." Leonard's face turns red. Wrong choice of words; she's speaking too quickly. She needs to calm him down. "I just- why would I do that? How would I do that?"

"You said it yourself, your powers are stupidly strong," Leonard points out. He comes around the corner of the counter and it takes all she has for Vanya to stay still. "And you've seen who your family is- someone needs to stop them."

_Permanently,_ Vanya finishes for him. It's what he said in all those letters even if he's not saying it to her. "They've toned down since my father died. Petty crimes- and they've helped some people. Those orphans…"

"Are you _defending_ them?" Leonard is looking at her like_ she's_ the insane one. "You said it yourself that they might not be evil but they have been terrorizing the public. They _kidnapped_ you."

"Sounds like a family issue."

Leonard makes a sound like a dying cat and throws his arms in the air. Vanya refuses to flinch. But he's getting closer and if he so much as puts a finger on her she's going to yell. "They've murdered people, Vanya. Someone has to put a stop to it, and you're the only one strong enough to."

Maybe he has some sort of twisted point; she's convinced herself for years that they are bad people, that she couldn't trust her own family. She's tried to come to terms with the fact that they are thieves and liars and, yes, killers. But something in Vanya can't accept that for them- not her own. Not when they spent so much of her life showing Vanya they are capable of so much better.

But even more than the fact that she can't accept such carelessness and callousness from them, Vanya cannot accept the idea that they should ever be hurt. And she is getting very tired of people telling her what's best for her.

"They have made mistakes," Vanya allows, rushing on before this man she used to think she knew interrupts, "but that does not mean that I should hurt them. And it doesn't mean that I should make the same mistakes they have. I will not fight fire with fire, not if it means compromising my beliefs about how powers like mine should be used. And I certainly won't hurt my own family."

"They hurt you!" He's agitated- this is exactly what she'd hoped to avoid. Vanya puts her hands up, palms out. She takes a few measured steps back. "Don't you want some- some- vengeance?"

_Ah,_ Vanya thinks, bleakly satisfied._ There it is._

"Just because I have been hurt does not mean I have to return the favor. No matter how tempting it is, Leonard."

_Understand,_ she urges him. _Understand what I'm saying. It's not over for you. Hope is not lost._

Leonard's eyes are wide and crazed, but he stops for a moment, head cocked, looking at her. Vanya holds very still, watching the way the light hits his face, casting it partly in shadow. The door is a good twenty feet away. The fireplace poker is still shaking, about a yard away from Leonard's right hand. "Do you think you can't do it?"

That throws Vanya for a loop. "Come again?"

Something in his expression resolves itself. He looks almost elated. Vanya's stomach sinks; she really does attract the crazy ones. "That's it, isn't it? You think you're not strong enough. Vanya, you are, you really are."

And the thing is, it would be so easy if that were the problem. If she could truly condemn her family for their actions. If she could wrap her mind around doing the unthinkable for the greater good. If her biggest obstacle was doubt in the strength of her power Vanya thinks her life would be incredibly simple. But her strength has never been in question; not after Ben. "That's not what I'm saying, Leonard. I'm saying no."

His mouth twists for but a moment, teeth bared. It's enough to send the books in his bookshelf vibrating. One shakes free and falls to the carpet with a dull thud. "You have such power and you're refusing to use it. What kind of hero does that make you, Vanya?"

She thinks about it for a bit. "A merciful one, I hope."

"Pathetic," Leonard hisses. Even knowing who he really is, what he wants her to do, what he's willing to do to hurt the ones she loves, that one stings. "That's what you are. Your father knew it. Now I do too."

"Is that what you read in his journal," Vanya asks innocently. She slides another foot back. The couch bumps her left hip and she curses softly; she's misjudged the distance.

Leonard goes rigid. "You found the attic."

"It's a small house."

"Vanya," Leonard starts, and really, she's had about enough. There is only so much lying and manipulation a woman can take in one week. Just this once, she throws caution to the wind. It is oddly freeing.

"I gotta say, I have a few issues with your interior decorating," Vanya baits. "I'm thinking I'll get a hotel room- motel art is better than your fucked up wood carvings."

Leonard lets out a strangled shout and lunges. Vanya backs up, almost flipping over the back of the couch, but steadies herself hurriedly. Leonard has gone for the poker. He brandishes it aloft, eyes too wide and mouth stretched in a snarl.

"Stop." Vanya snaps, and a single thought is enough to make a vase fly off the mantle and crash into the back of his skull. Glass shatters and Vanya can feel a shard slice into her cheek on its way passed. Leonard stumbles and drops his weapon, but does not fall.

Vanya runs.

Her hair ends up being her undoing; she knew she should have cut it. His fingers snatch at it and that's enough to slow her down for him to tackle. His weigh crushes hers to the floor and Vanya gasps. He's so much larger than she is; her bones feel close to breaking, hollow and fragile as a bird's. Her lungs feel close to collapse and his heat is disgusting. She kicks, yelling hoarsely, but is only rewarded with Leonard making her head rebound off the wood floorboards. Wet warmth trickles down her forehead. Vanya tastes salt and copper when she bites deeply into her own tongue.

"You ungrateful bitch," Leonard howls in her ear, breath hot and overwhelming. He's punching at her, tugging one arm behind her back for leverage; Vanya's seen Diego and Allison do it a thousand times. He will have control over her every move in mere moments. Something Five fixed only days ago wrenches back out of place in her shoulder and Vanya sobs. "You don't know the gift you've been given. But don't worry- I do."

Spots fill Vanya's vision and her throat constricts. So this is how it ends-

_"Get your goddamn hands off my sister!"_

And just like that, the weight on her back is lifted. Some of her hair rips away with Leonard's fingers but the burn in her scalp is barely registered. For a second all Vanya can do is gasp for breath, aching and terrified. Then she turns over, and lifts herself on one knee, hands at her throat.

"Klaus?" She grinds out in surprise.

Her lanky brother gives her a grin full of bloody teeth. Leonard uses his momentary distraction to punch Klaus in the back of the head and Klaus staggers before turning back to the wrestling he instigated.

"Hang- on- a min-ute, will you, sister- dear?" He gets out between pants, shoving Leonard's arm away when he goes for the fireplace poker again and wriggling in the headlock the other man has him in. Leonard gives an incoherent shriek and bites down on Klaus's ear, causing him to cry out in turn.

All right, Vanya draws the line at biting.

"Enough," Vanya says, and it's her saying it but it doesn't sound like her. It's her voice but there's something deep and dark in the notes as they leave her mouth. Everything goes a sort of milky white as she concentrates on the sound of her brother breathing raggedly. Anxiety and fear lance their way through Vanya's gut. She raises her hand without knowing quite what she's doing, and Leonard goes flying.

He hits the fireplace mantle with a crack and goes down in a shower of glass and wood and limbs. A few picture frames, wood ornaments and vases come tumbling down after him and burst into smithereens.

A moment of silence descends immediately. Leonard is unmoving.

"Uh," Vanya says. She lowers her hand. The white recedes. "Is he...dead?"

"Well I don't see a ghost," Klaus informs her. He's rubbing his throat and coughing, but his eyes are alert and steady on Leonard. "So I'd say probably not. You want that to change? I'm happy to oblige."

Vanya balks but before she can respond, Klaus's eyes flicker to something off to the side and he clicks his tongue. "It was just a suggestion. I was _trying_ to make her feel better!"

"I would not feel better watching you murder Leonard," Vanya tells him. "Who are you talking to? How did you find me?"

"Ben." Klaus shrugs. He holds up his hands when she pales. "I'm not trying to hurt you- I just- it's really compli- do you think we should get outta here?"

Vanya looks around at the destruction of the room. Klaus inspects it too. "You know, before the cops come? Or he wakes up?"

"Okay," Vanya agrees. "But no attempted kidnapping this time. Or I'll throw_ you_ into a fireplace, too."

"Klaus, are you alright?"

Her brother is bleeding from the back of his head and his knuckles are a red mess. She's pretty sure part of his ear is missing. But besides all that, he's also shivering and covered in a thick layer of sweat. Klaus grins as he leans back and straightens the ragged green vest he wears. "Never better, my dear Vanya."

"Uh-huh," Vanya replies, unconvinced. She too leans back on her palms. They're sitting on the roof of Diego's car (Vanya's pretty sure she's going to have to stop a murder when Diego finds out Klaus stole it without knowing exactly how the intricacies of driving work) in a downtown neighborhood. A wall of T.V. screens to the right throw flashes of pink and blue light over her brother's face.

"Well, I _am_ two days into detoxing." Klaus admits. He grins sheepishly at her when Vanya's head whips around. "Yeah, everybody else reacted that way, too."

"You haven't been sober since..."

"Before Ben died, yeah." Klaus sighs. Vanya can feel her expression shutter and Klaus scoots over, as if to share body heat- like he wants to comfort her. Vanya leans away and hates herself for missing him. She hates herself for hating it, too.

"Look, I wasn't lying when I said Ben is the reason I found you." Klaus looks pleading. "Do you remember when I told you all that I couldn't see the ghosts while I'm high?"

"Sure."

"Well, I couldn't see Ben either. But after what you said about being the reason he died, I had to know. So I quit. And poof! annoying dead brother mode activated."

"Just like that?"

"Hey, this hasn't been easy," Klaus snipes. "But I'm clean and Ben's here."

Oh God. Oh_ shit ._ She's not ready for this. Vanya can barely hear her brother over the rushing in her ears. "Vanya, listen to me. Listen!"

"You guys are always talking at me," she gasps faintly, "and you never say anything. Why should I listen if you're gonna lie like you did our entire childhood? _About Ben_ ."

"Okay, I guess we deserve that," Klaus concedes. "But will you listen to Ben?"

"He- you- he's really here?"

"He says hello," Klaus tells her in the gentlest tone she's ever heard from him. Then he rolls his eyes. "He's also been shouting at me to apologize to you about the whole abduction thing for an entire week, apparently. So, you know. Apologies."

"Gee, thanks." Vanya rejoins dryly, but everything else she wants- needs- to say sort of turns to ash in her mouth. Ben, supposedly here all this time. Ben, who she killed.

"Ben," Vanya starts, glancing at Klaus who nods at the empty space on the car's hood to her other side. She turns and speaks to the empty air. It feels less ridiculous than she'd thought it would. "Ben, I am so, so sorry. God, you can't know how sorry I am."

"It's not your fault," Klaus translates. Vanya looks up sharply, but his eyes are a little glazed and he's starting at the air too. "Ben- he says he was already dead when you- oh, God, Vanya I'm so sorry."

No. This she cannot accept; Vanya's had years to get used to the burden she carries. She won't let herself off the hook now. She feels ill. The scrape at her temple throbs in a staccato beat. "No, no. It was- I killed you, Ben. It was in your_ heart_ ."

"He's pretty sure he's right, though, Vanya." Klaus's face is clearer than she's ever seen it. "Here, I'll show you."

"What-"

Her brother's fists tremble, turn blue, and glow. Vanya gapes at him until Klaus nods at something behind her. She turns, and is face to face with her dead sibling.

"Ben," Vanya breathes.

The light of the T.V.s flashes through him as Ben grins at her. He raises a hand and wiggles fingers she can see through. "Hey, sis."

"Am I losing my mind?"

Ben laughs. Vanya's chest wrenches at the sound; she has missed him so much. "Nope. I'm still dead, just visible. You should congratulate Klaus, he's worked hard the past couple days."

"Congratulations," Vanya says mechanically. Klaus inclines his head. "Ben, I'm sorr-"

"Don't." Ben is stern. It's a strange look on him. "It wasn't your fault. Any of it. I was dead before I hit the ground, and I'd do it again if it means you're safe."

Vanya is shaking; for the millionth time today she feels like she can't breathe. Distantly, she can hear the metal of the lamppost above their heads twisting as it bends beneath her will. Ben's face is smooth and sweet. "And I want you to know that you're right. Our family shouldn't be following Dad's example anymore. It's what I wanted to tell you, before."

Klaus lets out a groan. "You guys might wanna say whatever you need to say fast. I can't hold this much longer."

Vanya feels frantic; she's only just gotten Ben back. She thought she'd never see him again. But the sweat drips off the end of Klaus's nose and Ben wavers in the air. "I don't want you to go."

"I don't either. But Vanya, I'm proud of you. And- and I think you might be the strongest of us, with or without powers. I-"

Klaus lets out a gasp and Ben vanishes. Vanya sniffles, ducking her head. Her face has mysteriously become wet. "I'm sorry, I can't do it for very long yet. Don't worry, he's still here." Klaus adds at the alarm on her face. He turns his head. "Ben says you might be the hero we need. He thinks you're the only one with any reason, which I take offense to."

"Kidnapping, " Vanya reminds him, and accepts the crumpled Kleenex Klaus hands her silently.

"Yeah, okay, I guess I walked into that one. Anyway. Ben followed you when you ran, to make sure you were safe. Guess he found some messed up stuff in that guy's attic?"

"You really don't want to know. He hates the Umbrella Academy; let's leave it at that."

"Yeah well, who doesn't these days?" Klaus smiles wanly.

And that's just the thing; Vanya can feel her chest tightening at the thought of what her family is, what their father made them to be. She is terrified for them- they are so hated and yes, they are so strong, but they are really so vulnerable. So many enemies, so few allies. They can't get along on a good day, and they don't have a clear direction. There are cracks in the Academy's armor. And looking into her brother's pale face, she realizes something very important, the one thing every single one of the Hargreeves have in common: they are all so very scared.

"I don't hate you," Vanya tells him, and means it. "I love you."

"Oh-" Klaus's eyes widen, his mouth hangs open. His hands open and close for a moment and then he slumps in relief. "Really?"

"I always loved you, Klaus." There's a beat. She studies her hands. "I just- even if I could control myself, I can't abide by what you do."

Her brother looks like a marionette with its strings cut. "I know. But we are what we do, aren't we?"

"It doesn't have to be this way," Vanya asserts desperately. She reaches out and curls her fingers around his hand. It takes no time at all for Klaus to hold her back just as tightly. His eyes are shining in the dim glow of the artificial lights. "You- I- we can all be better than we were before, Klaus. We just have to try."

He sounds so hesitant it reminds her strongly of the boy who used to scream in the night, somewhere far off the edge of the mansion's grounds where she couldn't hope to reach him. "Do you really think so?"

"Yes," Vanya assures him fervently. "Yes, I do. I do."

They stare at each other for a moment. It is the best she's felt in a long time, holding hands with her brother and hoping, hoping, hoping for a new light to rise tomorrow. Then his head jerks to the side.

"What's Ben saying?"

"'Look at the T.V.'" Klaus recites. Together as one, they turn.

Onscreen, the Umbrella Academy burns.


	9. Chapter 9

_She has to get out of here. Vanya knows now what Sir Reginald Hargreeves spent so long hiding from her, from all of them. She knows why he crushed her spirit, tore her down, made her into nothing. She knows why she has the pills, the bottles now rattling like maracas in her pockets._

_Vanya is a monster._

_She has to go; she can't stay here now, not with what she's done to her own brother hanging over her head. There's no way Vanya will ever allow that to happen to her other siblings. While there is breath in her body Vanya will not ever allow herself to harm her family. Never again._

_She hasn't washed the blood off yet. Everything happened so fast; seconds after she sat holding Ben's lifeless body in her arms, the shouting and shooting downstairs had petered out. She'd shifted Ben to lie as comfortably as she could manage on the floor and run for her room. Unbeknownst to the others, she'd hoarded her medicine rather than throw it away. Vanya knows Five would scold her for being stupid- what if their father found it all? But maybe she'd wanted to be caught. Maybe she'd wanted a safeguard against herself. Maybe she was stupid._

_It doesn't matter now. She has the pills and the clothes on her back and Ben's blood on her hands and that's all she needs._

_"Vanya!"_

_Allison catches her around the shoulders in the courtyard. Vanya's lungs are burning, her legs are jelly, her stomach twists into knots. She has vomited twice, once on her own bed and once in the bushes right outside the kitchen door. The stink lingers in her mouth, makes her eyes water, and mingles with Ben's blood to make her gag again and again._

_"Vanya, oh my God, are you okay?"_

_"I have to go. I have to go. Let me go, Allison."_

_Her sister's pretty face flinches. There's a cut at her brow and one under her right ear. Gunpowder darkens the tip of her nose, which she wrinkles. "What? Whose blood is that? Vanya, are you alright? Are you hurt? Where's Ben?"_

_Vanya retches again, tearing away to spit bile into the grass. Allison makes a worried noise behind her but Vanya can't say it. She can't face what she has done. Not yet. Maybe not ever._

_"I hurt them, Allison," she admits instead, because faceless strangers are easier to carry to the grave than her own brother. "I- I tore them to pieces."_

_"Oh, God." Allison's paler than Vanya has ever seen her. She looks as weak as Vanya feels, but her hands still fumble at Vanya's shoulders. "I'm so sorry, Vanya, we never meant for you to be caught up in this."_

_That- that sounds all too familiar. "What do you mean?" When Allison blanches, hesitating, Vanya surges forward. "What are you saying? What did Ben mean when he said you weren't who I thought you were?"_

_"I- oh God- shit- there's a reason Dad won't let you see the news when we go out Vanya. We're not heroes."_

_It is inconceivable. For a long second, Vanya stares, uncomprehending, feeling at a total loss. Allison hurries to continue, looking for a way out. "Look, Dad is in charge, and he- you know how he is. Selfish, borderline insane. He- makes us do things, Vanya. Bad things."_

_"No…" She can't accept this. Not her family, not her siblings. Not her Ben. "No, you're superheroes. Your powers…"_

_"We're super alright," Allison laughs derisively. Her fingers are clawing into the flesh of Vanya's shoulders. "Just not the good kind. It's why this all happened, we think. These guys in animal masks-"_

_She can't do this. Not now. Not ever. Vanya is vividly aware Ben's body lies cooling three floors above their heads. She can't be here any longer. She shrugs out of her sister's hold, readying herself to run faster than she ever has in her life. But-_

_"Do you want to be a hero, Allison?"_

_Allison clutches her tighter. "What do you mean?"_

_"Do you want to be my hero?"_

_"More than anything," Allison admits after a pause. She has never seen her so vulnerable and small. "After what Dad had me do to you- I always want to save you, Vanya. You're my sister."_

_"Good," Vanya says. She feels so far away all of a sudden, as if she's hearing and speaking with Allison from down a very long metal tube. Everything sounds tinny in her ears. "Then can you do one thing for me? Just one thing, Allison."_

_"I'd do anything for you."_

_"Rumor my powers away."_

_It looks like her sister's heart stops. She lurches forward and Vanya steps back from her clutching hands. She raises her voice over the other girl's protests. "Take them away, please Allison. Please, please Allison, please. You have to take them away."_

_"No! I can't- can't do that to you again! Not after-"_

_"I want you to," Vanya pleads, hysteria edging her voice. Something in it stops Allison short. "Please Allison, if there's one heroic thing you could do in your entire life, do this for me and don't ask me why. Please. I'm begging you, Allison."_

_Allison's eyes shine with unshed tears. Vanya is reminded that they are both very young. Then her beautiful sister opens her mouth and says, "I heard a rumor your powers stopped working."_

_"Thank you," Vanya whispers. Then she turns her back, and sprints away from all that she has ever known._

"Can't you make this thing go any faster?" Her cry is barely audible over the roar of the engine. The tires squeal in protest as Klaus takes them around a corner too sharply.

"I don't even know how to drive!" He reminds her. "You want to give it a go?"

"I don't know how to drive either."

"Then shut up and stop judging me!"

Vanya shuts up and directs her anger- her fear, roiling in the base of her stomach- out the window. There's a flare of light and a crash as half the streetlights lose their bulbs.

"Oh, real mature," Klaus snarks. Vanya scowls. The radio flips through several stations on its own before settling on heavy metal. As a guitar riff screeches in their ears Klaus sends her a sneer. Okay, maybe she deserves that one. Vanya reaches over and turns the radio off.

"Exactly how powerful are you, sis?" Klaus asks, and the way he says it she can tell he's quoting the ghost in the back seat.

"I don't know," Vanya tells him honestly. "Pretty strong, I think."

"Good," Klaus replies, expression grim. They're rounding the corner from the Academy and Vanya can see the unnatural orange glow of the fire brightening the pitch dark sky at the end of the road. Smoke plumes across the horizon and the smell permeates through the car. She tries not to gag; it will only get worse from here. "I think we're gonna need you."

"Do you know what's happening?"

"It's those guys who killed Ben." Klaus's face looks grey in the dim light, mouth set into a thin line. Vanya's stomach turns and it has nothing to do with the ash she's inhaling already. The Academy driveway comes up on their right and Klaus swerves the wheel. "Five said they had to do with where he was all this time-"

"I know, he told me. What's happened?"

Klaus has the good nature not to be offended by her interruption. He shrugs, causing the car to wobble violently. "They were tracking him."

Shit. This is going to be worse than she thought.

The Academy is holding up well for as old a house as it is; the west wing has crumbled to nothing more than a blackened skeleton of itself, the frame still smoldering. A few of the upper windows had burst outward as they traveled up the road, and Vanya can see flames lick out into the night from the openings. But the rest of the house is still standing, albeit groaning under the assault. Already she can hear the pop of gunfire and what could possibly be Allison screaming. Her heart tightens and Klaus has to speed up to avoid a tree falling into their path from the force of her terror.

"Klaus, that's the gate," Vanya says. Klaus grins wildly and the car does not veer away. He presses down on the gas pedal. For a moment she sits stunned before she hastily pulls her seatbelt across her body, bracing herself against the seat. Okay, so this is how they're going to do this.

"Going in loud, huh?" She bites out just as they impact with the wrought iron. Klaus's teeth flash white in the dark and she can't help the slightly hysterical laugh she gives in response.

"No better way, sister dear."

The gate crashes aside as their engine revs. The car swerves, fishtailing for a few brief, agonizing seconds, before Klaus slams on the breaks. They roll forward some yards, tires screeching, finally coming to a jolting stop halfway up the lawn. Vanya throws open the door and launches herself out before Klaus even takes his hands off the wheel.

Some distant part of her brain is registering how funny the situation is as she searches frantically for a way in. The front door is blocked by flames and a fallen support beam- even if she did manage to get through, the entrance room is structurally damaged and she'd be in danger of it collapsing. All this week she longed to be out of this house and yet here she is, desperate to get in. Glass rains down on her head as she sprints around the corner, and a body flies from the second story to land in a crumpled heap a yard or so to her left.

She veers away for a second before recognizing the silver knives strapped to the man's back. Vanya grabs her brother around the bicep and hauls him up from where Diego was in the process of getting to his hands and knees. A second later, his weight shifts and Klaus is beside her, helping sling their brother's arm (oh, that's not the angle it's supposed to bend at) around his own neck.

"Diego!"

"You okay, bro?"

"What are you two-" Diego cuts himself off, turning his head to cough and retch onto the lawn. Both Vanya and Klaus wrinkle their noses, but neither drop him. Diego gasps for a second. "It's n-not safe- y-y-yo-you gotta get outta he-here."

Klaus looks at her. Vanya looks at Diego. Diego looks at the house, then back at her. Something solid and warm slots into place in her chest and it feels like coming home like nothing else ever has.

"I'm not leaving without you," Vanya decides. Some unnamed tension releases around his eyes and Klaus laughs, high and loud like a hyena. She smiles, just a little.

"Let's g-go g-get the ot-thers, then."

The back door into the kitchen is still more or less intact. The doorknob proves too hot to touch and the broken glass of the window threatens to shred the flesh of any stupid enough to reach through. Klaus curses and Diego growls.

Vanya raises one hand and the door flies inward off its hinges, flipping over the kitchen counter and landing with a crash on the table.

"Holy shit," Diego says.

"Let's go," Klaus says.

Somewhere on the second floor, their sister is screaming. Gunfire comes from higher up, and Vanya's ears are popping- a clear sign Five is blinking in and out of existence at such a fast rate he's breaking the sound barrier. Their father used to hate it.

"We've got to split up," she tells her brothers. "Regroup in the courtyard, get out as fast as we can."

"See that's what they all say in the horror movies and look how those turn out," Klaus replies. They keep low as they creep into the entrance hall, heading for the staircase, which is looking more rickety than she's ever seen it. The steps are burnt and half crumbling, and the handrail is a blackened skeleton of its former self.

"We don't have time for this," Diego snaps. "What are you two going to do if you get into a fight, huh? Leave it to me."

"Uh, I'm pretty sure you've got internal bleeding, my dude." Klaus is sweating, shaking and red, but his hands glow blue. "If anyone stays behind, it should be you. And did you not see the thing with the door? Our little sister is a badass now!"

Diego looks at her and Vanya rests a hand on his shoulder, schooling her expression into a calmness she does not feel. "It'll be alright."

Diego opens his mouth, obviously about to protest, when a figure rounds the corner from the living room and opens fire on them. All three duck and Vanya feels Diego shove at her shoulder roughly. "Get out of here!"

She knows he means to leave the house. The smoke is collecting near the ceiling, the wood beams are creaking ominously, and she can barely see, let alone breathe. She heads upstairs with Klaus anyway.

Halfway up, Klaus's leg goes through one of the steps and he staggers, yelping. Vanya barely has time to turn and catch him around the elbow before he goes pitching into empty space. The railing- what's left of it- splinters and falls away. There's a loud crack beneath them on the first floor- she hopes it landed on someone's head. Klaus leans on Vanya and tugs his shin from between floorboards.

"Careful," she warns. Klaus groans. His pants are all torn up, and Vanya can see red seeping from the pale skin beneath. That paired with the beating he took from Leonard earlier can't feel nice. The familiar sounds of Diego's knives cutting through air drift up from downstairs.

They manage the rest of the stairs without incident, but as soon as they get to the landing, Klaus stops her, nodding to the corner. "Someone's there."

Vanya opens her mouth to ask how he knows, but is stopped by gunfire from the end of the hallway. Klaus shoves her to the ground, rolling on top of her and it's all too much, too reminiscent of Ben. Vanya grabs at him, rolling them over and into another room. It's only when she stands that she recognizes it as Luther's old childhood bedroom.

Klaus peeks around the doorjamb as footsteps approach. "Two of them," Klaus whispers. He grimaces. "Still wearing those creepy masks, ugh."

"Don't go out there."

"You got a better idea? I'm all ears."

Vanya closes her eyes, concentrates on his harsh breathing, the loud pop of Five's teleportation from upstairs, the sound of Allison's rumors floating from down the hall and-

"Holy shit,_"_ Klaus breathes. Vanya opens her eyes.

Waves of sound or air or something are rolling from her outward, pulsing in the space between them. The same fuzzy whiteness from Leonard's house covers her eyes.

"Move," she orders, and that same voice-that-is-not-hers resonates from somewhere deep. Klaus moves.

The blast she sends down the hall has both gunmen flying down the stairs, tumbling ass over elbows. She raises a hand and their guns soar into the air and crumple like paper when she closes her fist.

"Holy _shit_ ," Klaus repeats with feeling. "Ben, did you _see_ that?"

"Let's go." Vanya cuts him off. She feels nausea tickle the back of her throat but swallows it down impatiently. Now is not the time for a freak out.

Allison bursts from the music room- thank God, Vanya was not looking forward to going back in there- as soon as they start down the hall again. She doesn't even look surprised to see her siblings rushing towards her. "Luther's downstairs securing a way out. Diego was trying to stop the guy with the flamethrower, I don't know where Five is-"

"Flamethrower?" Vanya gets stuck on this while Klaus replies at the same time, "Diego fell out a window and Five is upstairs. I think."

"You guys get Diego and Luther out of here," Allison fires back rapidly. "I'll go get Fi-"

She doesn't finish before the butt of a machine gun slams into the back of her head. As Allison falls to the ground, groaning, she reveals a woman in a pink, cartoonish dog mask ready to fire on them. She pulls up short at the sight of Vanya.

"Step aside," comes muffled from under the mask. Vanya glowers, feels that white hot power shooting through her veins. She could get used to it. Maybe. If she could only stop it from killing…

"Or what, you're gonna shoot me? Do it, then."

"Uh, Van? Not usually advisable to ask someone to shoot you."

The woman is trying to train her gun on Klaus but Vanya shuffles to the side, shielding him and putting herself between the woman and Allison in the process. The woman backs up a step.

"Klaus, take Allison and get out of here."

"But Five-"

_" Go ."_

He must know that at this point, with Allison sporting a likely concussion and his own bad leg, he's dead weight for her. Klaus scrambles to haul their sister up, takes her weight and backs them down the hall. Allison's fingers try to catch Vanya's shoulder, but she's still weakened from the blow. Vanya shakes her off and makes sure the woman can't get a clean shot until their eyes leave her back as they round the corner.

The woman curses, the barrel of her gun lowering.

Vanya cocks her head. "So is there any reason why you won't shoot me?"

"You afraid?" The woman slides her foot to the left and Vanya mirrors her. In moments, they're circling each other like wild cats, waiting to pounce.

"Do I look like it?"

The woman snorts. "I don't get paid enough for this shit."

"Tell me the reason why you're doing this."

_" You ."_

Vanya's anger lashes out before she even processes it and the gunwoman goes flailing into the wall. Picture frames shatter on her impact, crushing glass between her back and the wall. She cries out, writhing; the wood must be hot- Vanya can feel the flames licking from inside Klaus's room without even needing to look through the doorway. "Why me?"

Through screaming, the woman grunts. "The apocalypse...must..be..preserved."

"What does that mean?" She hauls the woman away from the wall finally, dropping her at her feet. Vanya's stomach turns at the sight of her bloodied, blistering back, but she can't feel too remorseful, not when she saw the blood leaking from the back of Allison's head moments ago. "What are you saying- that me and the apocalypse are-"

"One and the same, you stupid bitch," the woman snaps. After a second where Vanya stands there, stunned, the woman goes for the gun at her hip. She barely gets off a shot before Vanya flings her down the stairs like she did the others.

"Not today," Vanya calls after her tumbling body. "I'm no killer."

There's a pop just as Vanya gets to the third story landing using the back staircase. Only one other sibling used those, and only ever to meet her after hours and read together.

Five is speaking before she even fully turns to him. "What are you doing here? You've got to get out."

"I could say the same to you," Vanya replies, coughing. The smoke is getting worse up here, she's sweating like she has a fever and her eyes are leaking tears continuously now. The smoke is so thick she can hardly see him but what she can make out of her brother shows Vanya Five is not faring much better. He's also listing to the side, clutching his ribs.

"Mom was up here."

At the look on his pale, drawn face Vanya's stomach drops. "Is she-"

"They killed her." He says shortly. "Just like they killed Ben."

"We've got to get out of here." Focus up, Vanya. Make it count. Get to safety. Be a hero.

(_ Do you really think you can pull this off?_ Sir Reginald sneers.

_I'm getting real tired of you, old man._ She snaps back.)

"Diego and Luther are going after the fire starter-"

"They're outside," Five tells her. "I got them out. They didn't manage to kill him, but I got the rest up here. Second floor?"

"Taken care of," Vanya assures him and hopes that her brothers had the decency to pull the unconscious bodies out too.

"Good. one less thing to worry about." Reaching out, Five seizes her arm in a grip too tight to come from a thirteen year old, and says unceremoniously, "Let's go."

Vanya spends the next half a second wishing she was never born as her insides get sucked through a hole in space and reemerge in the kitchen.

"Was that really necessary?"

Five sends a pointed look to the flaming, crumbling remains of the stairs and she has to concede the point. "Get out, I'll be right behind you."

The rest of the Hargreeves are sprawled out on the grass of the courtyard, in various states of distress. Allison gets to her first, followed by Klaus, who had been sitting in between some rose bushes and prodding at his bad ankle. Their other brothers are some distance away, shouting incomprehensibly and gagging on smoke. Vanya wonders vaguely if anyone thought to call the fire department.

"Vanya, are you alright?' Allison clutches at her shoulders just like she did all those years ago, and this time Vanya holds her back. Her sister's skin feels too hot under her hands. Blisters are forming on the back of her neck and they draw Vanya's attention to her own burns, on her side when she collided with a wall trying to get up the back stairs and on her own palms. She doesn't let go.

"I'm okay." Vanya is not sure she is, actually, but her family is alive. As long as Five can get out after finding the one who set the Umbrella Academy aflame, they're all going to be fine. Adrenaline courses through her and she's sure she's going to crash hard later.

Klaus claps her on the shoulder and Vanya barely suppresses a wince. "Look at you, superhero! You got me and Allison out just in time. They award medals for that, you know."

Vanya starts to reply, maybe suggest getting away from the still on fire building when Allison gasps and draws her back behind her. Klaus looks up sharply and they close ranks around Vanya before she's even caught sight of the gun.

There, in the doorway, is a man with the largest gun she's ever seen outside of T.V.

(_It's the flamethrower,_ her father points out.

_Now's really not a good time, Dad,_ she replies.)

"The apocalypse must be reignited," he says from behind another one of those Godawful masks. This one looks like a frog. "The catalyst must be reset."

"If you're talking about me," Vanya pipes up. She tries to force her way to the front- what are her siblings thinking, she's the one with untold powers here, and they're already injured- but Allison pushes her back, baring her teeth at the gunman. "If it's me, then no can do. I'm not in the world ending mood these days. Check back next week, won't you?"

"Oh, you will be," he assures her, right before his finger tightens on the trigger.

No. It's barely even a thought, just a coiled anger in her gut before Vanya screams. A wave of sound explodes out of her, knocking aside her siblings. A gale starts up, tearing trees free from the roots, shaking the already weak foundations of the Academy. The milky white blinds Vanya once again.

By the time the wave hits the pyromaniac in front of her, it's so strong that his gun simply explodes. Shrapnel and debris blow out in every direction with the force of her power. The man stumbles back, falling into the flaming house and the walls of the kitchen collapse inwards on him.

There is a second in which the world is totally silent around Vanya. She breathes freely, not tasting ash or smoke but sweet, clear oxygen. It is so peaceful, here at the eye of her own storm.

Luther yells, Diego cries out, and her calm is shattered when Vanya turns to see Allison and Klaus lying motionless on the ground. Blood pools from them both.

Allison's blood pours, hot and slick, over her hands. Vanya swallows back bile. Her sister's eyes are searching frantically, darting from side to side and Vanya leans over her, tries to smile. "Hey, hey, it's okay. It's okay. You're going to be okay."

"She's losing too much blood," Diego snaps from somewhere behind her and Vanya grits her teeth.

"You're not helping," she tells him sharply and Diego drops down to one knee next to her. He's got some strip of cloth in his hands that Vanya realizes belatedly must come from his shirt, which is torn to shreds. She takes it in one hand, keeping a firm hold of her sister's throat in the other, and presses it to the wound. One of Allison's hands comes up to grab at her shoulder and Vanya meets her eyes. She's trying to form words.

"I love you too," Vanya answers Allison, the sincerity in her voice nearly choking her. "I always did. I love you so much."

Allison can only blink at her, a terrible gurgling coming from her mouth. Vanya shushes her. She blinks again and tears make their way down her cheeks; Vanya wishes she could wipe them away but she's terrified of moving her hands. Allison reaches out again and this time clings onto Klaus's wrist, the only part of him she can reach. He doesn't even twitch but Vanya had seen his chest rising and falling before she scrambled to her sister's side.

There's a roar from behind them and Diego turns but Vanya doesn't. She can't, not when her sister is dying in her arms. Why is it always her who holds them as they die?

A body is flung across the courtyard to their right and Vanya catches a flash of blue- the man in the bear mask is down for the count, then. Good. She can't afford to get distracted.

"No, no, no, _Allison_ ." Luther is there in the next second, looking as if he is the one at death's door.

"A hospital, she needs a hospital," Diego tells Luther. "Does anybody have a phone?"

No one does.

"Check Klaus," Vanya tells her brothers. They don't move. "Check him, he was in the same blast radius as Allison. _Now!"_

Diego stumbles away. For a moment there's silence and Vanya hates it because now she's just sitting with her dying sister and her fear making the trees around them crack and bend beneath its weight. She can see the vibrations coming from her body in the air, clear and wavy. On the street, car alarms are going off, lights are flickering rapidly and at least one vehicle is floating.

She is so scared.

Diego rolls their brother over and hisses. Vanya's stomach drops and Luther pales even further.

"What is it?" Their big brother asks; the way his voice cracks makes Vanya's heart twist in her chest. She doesn't want to know either.

"Sh-sh-shrapnel," Diego reports. Out of the corner of her eye Vanya can see his hands fluttering uselessly at Klaus's chest. Something silver and black and bloody pokes from Klaus's ribs. "A l-lot of i-it. _Shit._"

"He'll be okay, though, right?" Vanya's own voice sounds small in comparison to the wail she can feel building inside. Something desperate claws at the back of her throat. "He'll be okay."

"It doesn't look good," is all Diego is willing to stress. A sob gets caught in her throat. Allison's eyes have closed.

"Where's Five?" they have to all be here. It'll be okay if they're all together, she knows it will be. It has to be.

"I thought you went to look for him?" Diego says tightly. He's got his hands pressed to the worst of it on Klaus's midsection. She can see the scarlet already staining his gloves.

"He was right behind me."

And speak of the devil, there's a loud pop from just across Allison's body. Vanya doesn't have the strength to look up from her sister's slowly slackening features, but she can feel Five's hands (smooth and young and so old) cover hers on Allison's throat.

"No," Five gasps. "No. It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"Five," Vanya says. But she stops. What could she possibly say to make this alright? The more seconds tick by, the more Allison's eyes flutter closed, the more she's realizing that she might lose two more siblings today. She might lose everything. The human voice can't express that.

"I fixed it," Five shouts. His voice is wreaked. Vanya realizes distantly that he is going into hysterics. "Years I worked to fix it. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. I fixed it!"

And just like that, a light bulb flickers on inside Vanya's head. It can't be easy, it won't be nice, not for anyone. But if it works, if Five could pull it off…

What she wouldn't give for a second chance. What she wouldn't do to give that to her family, to grow up _right_. To be a hero. To be a family, what wouldn't they all do?

"Five!"

Five looks up and the ash on his face makes him look all of his thirteen years. She wants to reach out to hold onto him but Allison's eyes are closed and her pulse is slowing beneath Vanya's fingers. Five is trembling, Luther is crying softly somewhere to her left, holding Allison's head in his lap. Klaus hasn't moved. Diego is the only other one who looks up, staring right at her. He was always so good at knowing when she needed to speak.

"You can still fix this," Vanya says. "We still have a chance. Take us back."

"Wh-what?' Diego blinks at her, not moving his hands from Klaus's chest. "Wh-a-at do y-you mean?"

"Take us all back to before it began," Vanya tells Five, locking her eyes on his and not wavering. "It can be better than before. _We_ can be better than before."

She can see the moment he gets it. He doesn't even shake his head. "It's dangerous- I've never tried time travel with so many people-"

"It's the only way to save our brother and sister, Five."

Diego sucks in a breath. Luther's hand falls onto Vanya's shoulder; he's stopped crying at some point, eyes stunned. They are all looking at her and Vanya feels something strong and hot and protective swell in her chest until she's fit to burst. Allison breathes faintly under her hands.

"Are you serious?" Luther asks.

"What other plan is there?" She rejoins and he has the decency to look away. Luther squeezes her shoulder and Vanya drops her head to the side, brushing her temple against his wrist. "We're running out of time."

"You'd do that for us? Go back with us?" Diego clarifies, gaze as sharp as his knives. He takes one hand off of Klaus to wrap bloody fingers around Vanya's own wrist. His touch is warmer and softer than she'd thought it would be. "You'd do that?"

"I'd do anything for you," Vanya gets out hoarsely. The truth burns on the way up but it leaves a pleasantly cool sensation in her throat when she releases it. She has loved her family from afar for so long and now- now she might have a chance. Diego's eyes shine and he clears his throat gruffly, nodding.

"Then what are we waiting for," he mutters, looking expectantly at Five. "be a big damn hero and save our siblings, Five."

Five looks at Luther, who doesn't release Vanya's shoulder. He nods. Reaching out, Five tucks a hand into Klaus's still elbow and keeps the other wrapped around Vanya's on Allison's throat.

"Get ready," Five warns them. "This is gonna get bumpy."

Vanya wakes up in the same place she sat in the courtyard approximately fifteen years younger. She forgot how much she'd hated her bangs getting into her eyes.

Allison is struggling upright next to her. Without thinking, Vanya throws too short arms around her sister's neck. Allison is quick to clutch her back.

"I thought I was dead," she mutters into Vanya's hair. Vanya holds on tighter. "I thought I was _dead._ "

"It's okay, you're okay."

"Whoa, talk about deja vu." She has never been happier to hear her brother's annoying humor. There's shuffling from around her, and someone retches into the grass. Vanya can't blame them- Five's traveling is sickening at best. She doesn't know how he does it.

"Holy shit, it worked," Diego says. He sounds shocked. "Hey, did you have to turn us all young again, Five? Couldn't we have gone back like, a week?"

"Not if he wanted to fix all of this," Vanya answers, pulling back from her not-dead sister reluctantly. Allison twines their fingers together. Vanya marvels at the fact that only seven days ago- eight now, she supposes, and a number of years into the future- she'd pulled away, reluctant to give into the familial affection she craved. Life threatening situations sure did change a lot.

"She's right," says a voice that makes Vanya freeze in her tracks. A hand squeezes her free one. She's almost scared to look up.

"Hey, V," Ben says. His smile is wide and bright and alive. His eyes are such a warm shade of brown. "Thanks for the resurrection."

"Hey, I thought I was the necromancer in this party," Klaus calls, but he sounds cheerful and clear and not like he's about to die any time soon.

"It was Five, really." Vanya smiles, though, and squeezes his hand back.

"So," Luther starts from where he's helping a weakened Five sit up. Five bats his hands away irritably. No lasting damage there, then. "What now?"

That decision is taken from their hands, however, at the voice that shouts at them from over Vanya's head.

"What do you children think you are doing?"

Vanya turns, trying to ignore the dread that settles deep into her gut. Neither of her siblings let go of her and she does not let go of them.

There, standing in the doorway of a perfectly intact Umbrella Academy, is Sir Reginald Hargreeves. His jowly, angry face is as healthy as ever. His eyes are cold steel. Vanya's stomach flips, but she guesses she knew what she was asking for when she convinced Five to do this. Time to face the music.

But Vanya is not going to shrink back from the fire this time. She is done hiding.

None of the others speak up, the shock of their travel and the reappearance of the worst man alive prompting speechlessness. Sir Reginald glowers, stalking forward to their little circle on the grass under his favorite tree. She wouldn't be surprised if he thought they were sullying the place with their presence.

"Play time is reserved to a half hour between twelve and twelve-thirty on Saturdays. Get up and go back inside this instant!"

Vanya looks at her father and thinks about her life. She thinks about the pills and the pain of betrayal. She thinks about her siblings trying to protect her from their father. She thinks about how they could never quite escape his influence, even after his death. She thinks about how desperately they wished to be her heroes, as if they knew she was the only person in the world who would ever look at them like that. She thinks about the atrocities Sir Reginald forced her family to commit all in the name of his own greed.

Vanya thinks about what it means to be a hero.

She rises, trying to block her family from his glare. "Leave us alone." It's that same voice as before, when she used her powers; deep and powerful and Vanya is just now realizing that maybe it is hers, after all.

Sir Reginald blanches for a moment, before scowling at her.

"Do not talk back, Number Seven. I gave you all an order and you_ will_ obey. Now move!"

Sometimes to be a hero doesn't mean you have to save the world. Sometimes you can just save yourself. Sometimes you can just save seven young children.

Sometimes being a hero means giving your loved ones the chance to be heroes too.

Vanya takes a deep breath, looks the man who claims to be her father dead in the eye, and plants her feet. "No._ You_ move."


End file.
